Pretending to be Allive

In my eyes, you're just pretending to be alive
with eyes pulled tight and expressions tinged in grey.
The footsteps that echo around the paper walls are dull
in the fumes of heartache and silver. You said it was good
to be alive before your brain had felt a thing, but with
memories, like frozen glass, shattered on the floor; we wait
for cement and shards of razorblades in our eyes. With blood
leaching colour from the floor and the surrounds; the ink is
only black after the walls are burning down. And helpful hands
gave you both incentive and method to let your defences down -
the semen stains the headrest and the blood is thicker now.
The towers you build in this empty bathroom stall collapse
in a mess of ivory and bone, with shattered tiles, like heart attacks,
a mess of heaving brown. And then we build footpaths and roads
through our arteries as we watch the sun fall down; philosophers
one and all, but blind to emotion and the stinging grip of coal.
Waking up to darkness under bland electric bulbs; the outcast
angels in a modern era, singing through the haze, but cameras
and computer screens show the truth beneath the flesh.
Blue-screen effects and synthesised wings show support and
counteract. With greying flesh and tattooed bones, you
never really changed beyond sinking below the ground.
In my eyes, you were always just pretending to be alive.