Like a boxer who has given up hope
And just hangs on the ropes
soaking up the blows
taking comfort
in the blinding flashes
that strike escape
from despair.

Like a moth
smouldering in the candle wax
immolated in its own desire
to reach the sunset
spitting and crackling
ignominiously,
a victim of its own nature.

Like the razor
dragging through your skin
the searing orgasm of fire
killing the hate, the guilt, the self loathing
the warm tears of haemoglobin
platelets begin instantly to heal.

Like the secret drinker
getting up in the night
too weak to resist
killing his liver
just for the solace of narcosis,
the mortality,
the suicide,
pushed to the back of the mind,
in the need for for release.

We all have places
we revisit
where the unburied corpses lay rotten
because pain
is just being too weak
to accept
that something can never be changed,
someone can never be brought back again,
that someone will never love you again.

There are no real ghosts.
We haunt ourselves,
seeking refuge
in the denial
that everything expires.