Downward Spiral

Featured art by Ben Stockdale

Listen to Downward Spiral by Richard Charles Stevens

Listen to Somewhat Damaged by Nine Inch Nails

On the downward spiral
Things are every bit as wasted as they seem
Dreams go up in smoke while we’re left choking on the vapours of decree
Hope afloat in no way guaranteed
Faith obsolete
Only final breaths left to redeem
Open veins in state of quarantine
Pain indiscreet
Only time of death left to achieve

With options getting thinner
Frets grow ever more obese
No doves on hand
No branch of peace
No estimated time for woes to cease
Precious little left but pent-up tension to release
Pending elementary defeat
Episodic memory rudimentary and senses incomplete
Feelings less than sensory
Deprived of all sensation
Dead as fallen autumn leaves beneath the eaves of disbelief
Teeming all about the eve of bleeding devastation

Heading nowhere fast
Ensign at half-mast headed south
In the mouth of madness and about to be bled out
Less than zero reasons to remain of keen devout
Bitter fate appears to be spelled out

We were never meant to see
We were never meant to dream
We were never meant to host the ghosts of who we used to be
Used up and discarded
Anally retarded
Fails on epic scales pronounced the frail and the fainthearted

Survival is the chosen key
Revival is the open door
However, this endeavour is a red letter event when they request both feet be nailed down to the floor
Moving on is violation
Better then to waste away
Better just to sever ties with right of way they chased away
Side order of razor blades just so that we can taste the pain
Just so that we digest the blame
Forget we ever had a name

Nightmares in our damaged brains
Eyesores with protruding veins
Broken little one-armed bandits
Crudely tumored human stains
Decimated decimals, each numeral a funeral in waiting
Soon to be a eulogy, presumably to devastate the widow of a chamber strangulated

Blunted by these grunts with teeth
Shunted out of disbelief
Caked in cruor
Bloody minded
Shake us down
They’ll never find it
Never learn the secret of the naked flame ablaze inside us
Find us at the furnace and we’ll burn it to the ground
Then reconstruct the very second they are not around

We were never meant to see
Through eyes with nothing true to say
Cut to shape and put to shame
Out of favour
Shooed away
Neutered feet on flat terrain
Packed on the commuter train
Best to simply let us be
To reassess our entropy

Took some time to find our beat
Cock our rifles
March our feet
Lock it down with rifles cocked
With jaws that lock
With teeth that bite
Play hopscotch at the bleeding site
And toss away the master key

Shooting stars and looting stripes
Dreaming dreams of waking life
Death forsaken
Undertaking renovating enterprise
Lips as black as sea, exacting kisses with our teeth that bite
Pissing on the ashes of the lives undressed we leave behind
Seeping through the pavement cracks
To claim back entertainment tax

Crack the whip and trip the sensors
Give no shits for glib consensus
Lock in target, steady aim
Cock the trigger, then go bigger
March defiant, all guns blazing
Time has come to ring the changes
Prize your centre stage and own it
Find the rule that states
Decode it
Hope afloat with lifetime guarantee
The downward spiral
Is the only road that leads to late revival
The key to which unlocks the box
To outfox evens
Beat the odds
Delay white flag
Go
Live
Repeat
With liberty
Claim victory
Survival