each mans hell is in a different place
mine is just up and behind my ruined face

Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to write a story using only 6 words.
 He wrote:
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn

A Smile To Remember

we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
to be happy, told me, 'be happy Henry!'
and she was right: it's better to be happy if you
can
but my father continued to beat her and me several times a week while
raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn't
understand what was attacking him from within.

my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: 'Henry, smile!
why don't you ever smile?'

and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw

one day the goldfish died, all five of them,
they floated on the water, on their sides, their
eyes still open,
and when my father got home he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
smiled

-Charles Bukowski

Green eyes, 
Green like the sea. 
Pity the one that sees them 
And doesn't know how to swim.

Audience member: Play a happy song?
Damien Rice: A happy song? I don't do happy.

I have a mind that’s filled

With hatred, angst and melancholia

I’d rather you just left me here

I feel afraid to speak

Enter or exit

God help me

I treat myself as you would

A thief or like a caged animal

I weep.

I utter three words

One for the mess in my head

One for the horrible thoughts

Which come howling on my skin

Fee fi fo fum, now I’m ugly

And now I’m dumb

Here I lie

Tears in my eyes

Why would you look at me?

When even I can’t?