The Voices, the Screams

Faced with both an outward and inward battle, the present voices tear the mind in two.

Today you wake up, today you sleep

Some do these at the same time

Sleeping through their lives

In an attempt to become numb

You walk through your day trying to hide

Tip-toeing across the border of safety and danger

Knowing that the moment these shadows guarding your presence fade

You are the first target, the only target, they will see

Their voices bombard you,

Telling you of your unworthiness, of your faults

Speaking both lies mixed with truths forcing you to believe

Forcing you to accept what you are told

They slowly pick apart the walls you forged in the night

Those you crafted slowly and carefully,

Making certain not a crack of weakness was to be seen

Lest they find your dying heart begging to bleed

Once they've covered the barrier,

Climbed over and upon it,

They fire their arrows at your already wounded soul

All the while you aimlessly try to defend an unwinnable battle

And in the quiet, when everything has shattered all around you

You alone should piece it back together,

Holding the puzzle pieces of a broken world

In the palms of bloodstained hands.

That in the midst of the quiet voices,

You alone should be the silence.

The voice of reason in the world that rejects you.

The backbone of a peace you cannot partake.

And despite the few kind words tossed about by those who care,

You are to ignore the constant battery of assaults,

The undying and unending battle that rages within,

Telling you both to go on, and to quit.

For in these loud halls there are but two voices

One that guides, leads and uplifts,

And one that rips through the very fabric of your being

Both voices, so quiet, yet all too loud.

Then through the progression of a hollow life

You come to a fork in the path,

One leads to death,

and the other to a pain filled life

And in this inner turmoil your soul screams the two sides

What is the point of fighting, if peace is never an option

Why continue if no progression will ever be made,

Other than a a clock scrolling up the minutes of resistance

The two quiet voices become louder and louder,

And eventually, although only two voices remain,

Your own mind is filled with the sound of thousands of screams

Some familiar, and some as foreign as the peace you seek

And as you plead for the voices to be silent,

Simply to let you make your mind,

Both become all the louder telling you what to do

Telling you both to live...and to die.