The Darkside of life is all I’ve ever known

I couldn’t ever call the bright side my own

With the Darkside, I was never alone

The Darkside welcomed me into the unknown

The Darkside and I throw sticks and stones

In hopes that we will break your bones

to hear your cries and hear your moans

and tell you that you will never go home

we laugh as we watch you drown

you don’t deserve to wear that crown

we got you some facepaint to look like a clown

Remember all those times you put us down?

Oh don’t worry you’ll go out in style

The Darkside and I will hold a trial

We recall you called us...′ hostile’?

We’ll try not to smile while we sentence you to exile.

But the Darkside and I fear that punishment is not enough for you.

But don’t fret we have other ones we can do.

Be nice and the Darkside might let you choose.

They may be kinda extreme to you but look at it from our point of view.

*Maniac laughter*

I met a man on the line today

the kind you’d never thought could be.

He was humming the sound of steel wheels and gnashed sand on the side of his head listening to a train about five miles away. His eyes were looking left-eared down the track back a ways from me. I noticed the left hand at first, coal and sulphur hardened, with nails scratching the cold hammered polished rail surface. His right hand was pulling out a twentieth pandrol clip like he was picking at a baby cotter pin. The wind caught his thin, palid hair, pushing it back as if humanity whisked and screamed from it. I crept closer.

There was a smell of formaldehyde and furnace cracked limestone rising from his ash and sinew skin, if you can call it that. He was lying bare except for a parchment waistband that had lava colored glyphs on it.

Then I noticed the right leg, resting over the other track and pressed up against the contact rail. There’s no way anything can do that. “Hey man, do you need help?” Only the fingers in his right hand were moving. I was close enough now to see him yank out another clip, snapped out flinging with a pry bar lever grip. My mind flushed up and quit trying to understand what was happening. I shuffle stepped on the ties and stood over him. I reached for his arm and grabbed with both hands around his wrist.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt like this before. I mean, grab the prongs on a plug half way in the outlet and 120v AC is just about enough to push an amp past your heart but 750V DC can smoke it inside out. It can also knock your nerves back through your ass on the ground. Not him though, he was pulling on the next pin.

I landed outside of the tracks in a soft bed of ballast. My senses didn’t care about anything anymore. It was like forgetting to sleep for days and not knowing what your own soul tastes like.

The man got up and walked over me. He was dead all right, looking down, wishing he hadn’t lost a fight a million years ago. “This train is fine, we’ll get the next one”. I saw it pass, slow and endless. Each passenger looked, flickering, by him and through him as if we weren’t there. In the last window of the last car an old woman saw me. She had her fingernail between the gap of her front teeth. Her eyes had all the matter I had never known.

As soon as it passed, the man had gone back to the rail, laid flat and started working out the bolts on the splice.

When my brain stopped cooking, I got to thinking, this is where the ordinary becomes something I can no longer do. Lifting myself up was the hardest part, a bit crawling, mostly pain, and all the vibration of a carillon hit by a solar flare sword of flame.

It could have been minutes to move a couple feet. The bolts and the fishplate were gone. He was scoring the splice weld with his nails, throwing sparks and screeches around it. I picked up an old sledge lying on the ground next to him. I swung it with everything I had, squarely at his back. It sounded like a lightning bolt that shattered a metal pole right next to me. It was just as bright. Now I couldn’t see or hear anything. I was feeling around for him and grabbed as tight as I could when he stood up straight as a pipe. This might have been my best chance to stop him. I ratcheted in my arms, skip jumped both feet on the 3rd rail, pulled back as hard as I could and prayed we both burned right there on the spot. We didn’t. It was like his ankles were welded to the track and suddenly cracked from the heat and force that was created. We both flew back and landed ten foot off at the bottom of a drainage swale. When I woke up, my head was in the mud. The left side of my face was seared and black, the eye was a boiled egg. All parts of my arms and chest that had been touching him were a Lycra/fat carbonized glass snake skin. My jeans were burning in like embers of steel wool chaps on bone and muscle. My shoes and feet were gone, charred and dead entirely. The only remnants of the man was a burned inverted image branded on me anywhere my clothes hadn’t been. I could feel a rolling hum getting closer again.

This next one came on the same 68 mph as the last, 643 lives, 210 dead, and the rest forever injured. The dogs found my body the next night, in the ditch with a hungry raccoon, not far from a pinch bar, sledge, chisel, and gas grinder.

The man? He was always lost

but I wish he could have stayed unmet.

It won't die,

this great lie.

Others praise,

but for days

I suffered.

Tortured.

Where was she

who put me

in their arms?

I am harmed

beyond words.

Untoward

happenstance?

Not a chance!

@Raksti

The problem with giving compliments,

Is that it can make an issue greater.

If I receive 10 compliments in a row,

Out comes my inner dictator.

Encouragement should not be neglected,

As if it is some kind of sin.

"So what should I do?" you may ask.

I don't know. Either way, you can't win.

I tryed,

I tryed so hard,

there was no turning back now

I lyed

I cryed

I died

inside,

but it didn't matter anymore,

They didn't love me,

I couldn't win,

the war

the ignored

the poor

and more,

they left me in the ground to rot

you can't jugde me

I did the only thing i could

by the saught

I got caught

and forgot

I am the dark

There is a place where only shadows lie

Whispering to themselves, slow and sly

Conjuring up fears we never thought might

Keep us up every single night.

This is where our sorrows reside

Scratching the walls of our empty minds

Screaming hoarsely until their throats run dry

Begging to be released, out into the sky

I can still hear them screaming

Telling me they can’t breathe

Let me out! They’re pleading

I want to be free

I cradle them in my heart

Shushing them inside

You’re not going anywhere I say

You’re the reason I’m dying

I don’t want to live anymore

I don’t want to breathe this air anymore

Every cell in my body rebels with hurt

I’ve never been so unsure

Is it easier to stay or is it easier to go?

I don’t wanna know...

Cause I know that I’m never ever going to change,

And you know that you’re always gonna stay the same.

the dark side

is the only place

where i feel sane

i can't see the monsters

that live in my mind

weaving shadows

it's quiet here,

my thoughts have

dissolved into puddles

i rule on a throne

made of skeletons

brandishing

a sceptor

of memories

that i can't

seem to throw away

i miss

the light sometimes

but then i remember

why i ran away

and a bittersweet

smile creeps

onto my

tear-streaked

face

Alone,

Waiting in the rain like a lost kitten,

For them to come and get me,

Another child run away,

From a family of fosters,

Police looking,

Radios calling,

Sweet ones looking to make sure you are safe,

Others looking to destroy all you know,

In hopes,

That you will,

Never,

Find your family,

Your real family,

Ran away once,

Will do it again,

The cold,

The rain,

The storm,

It doesn't bother me,

I feel safe,

A bit lost, yes,

But outdoors is home,

The city is not,

And I'm suffocating in a place they call home.

● A Young Time Traveler Goes To War●

(And the sad song that helped me more clearly visualize an episode in Traveler’s past I had wanted to write for a long time. https://youtu.be/GVW8_lvs_vs )

The time traveler cracked dust between his gritted teeth as he hauled himself across hot, scorched ground. The smoldering wreckage of his crashed fighter fizzled and popped twenty meters behind the jagged trail he left in the terrain as he clawed towards his time machine. He had to ditch his helmet after spilling out of the shattered cockpit of the fighter to avoid suffocating as it was no longer supplying him with breathable air.

This was bad because the air he was now breathing was poisonous as well as radioactive. It singed the back of his throat and burned his eyes.

He could see his time machine through his hazy vision. Almost there. This was good because outside of its temporally indifferent confines and advanced medical capabilities he only had minutes to live.

Far away on the horizon, against a ruined sky, the last of a fleet of giant airships fell into the jagged, decimated remains of a once great city. Burning with blue flames like a rapidly setting alien sun. He shut his eyes as he crawled but the blinding demise of the vessel still hurt as jagged psychedelic splotches crackled painfully like electricity arcing across his optic nerves. He could feel its impact through the ground accompanied by a sound like distant rolling thunder once the noise caught up with it. His eyes would be soaked with tears if the moisture did not instantly evaporat into the hot, toxic atmosphere.

This had been his first attempt to change the history of a world on such a vast scale. When he had first heard of this world and the cataclysmic, strife driven sterilization of its civilization he was so sure he could have changed the outcome of the events that led it to this end. He was so wrong. And now, out billions of souls, he was the only one left alive.

It was the hubris of a young time traveler that had brought him to this moment. The thinking that he was clever enough and could see deeply enough into the boiling pool of cause and effect that was time to prevent such a catastrophe.

Once at the door of his machine he popped a glove off his hand and slapped it with a bare palm. The pock marked mystery metal of its exterior was hot enough to burn his skin quite badly but the door slid open regardless. He hauled himself inside with the last of his strength and sealed it shut before passing out.

On the floor of the small airlock section the now activated time machine assessed his status and began to detoxify his exterior and rid him of radiation. He laid there for a long time before he was strong enough again to stand and strip himself of his tattered flight suit. He then made his way to the drive section and fell into the chair before the banks of screens and controls.

He took one last look at the lifeless, ravaged world outside but there was nothing left that he wanted to see. All that he knew of this world, everyone he cared about, fought with, for and even loved were all gone. Now there was only him.

He thought about going back and trying again. But then thought...why even try? It would only be more difficult the second time around and the outcome could be even worse. He barely survived this attempt.

He shut the screens off and limped into the sleeping quarters. He still needed major medical care. As he lay in the bunk and let the machine begin to tend to him with drugs and technology he came to a critical decision.

If wanted to continue traveling in time he would have to harden his heart, get accustomed to mind bending paradox and abandon normal human attachments and relationships for he would become far removed from any normal human. He would have to reconcile himself to the singularly isolating condition of existing outside of time.

But how could he not? It was so damned fun when he got it right. He clearly had a lot still to learn. The torment of this failed attempt to cheat time had taught him much. When he was well enough to move again he cleaned himself, donned a magnificent suit and once again sat before the controls. He needed a vacation. Time to piece his shattered heart and fractured mind back together.

He selected a more peaceful time deep in the planet’s past until he could figure out a way to take himself and his machine off this doomed world entirely. He could no longer bear the thought of staying here knowing what he knew of its future. The first step, he reckoned, in no longer caring. The time traveler lit a drug laidened cigarette, engaged the machine’s motors and faded away...alone.

@Raksti

"it'll be fun," they said.

"try some," they said.

take a sip, take a trip,

"it'll be fun," they said.

i guess i missed out on that fun,

because now i'm here,

on the dark side of

staying sober.