Fear and Self-loathing in Poetryville

In the Twilight glow, evening smells begin
yet here I sit, forgotten, only chosen when
they needed someone for entertainment
but when I ask for friendship they no longer smile
yes, I'm the weird kid for a while
but I know somewhere over the horizon sky
I will find a place made only for I,
and there, I will finally run, unshackled
at last unbound, every problem tackled
no more chains or weights to hold me down
no, in my place I wear the crown.
with a sad smile and a stout heart
I know perfection was never my part
in this beautiful tragedy we see on stage,
like the bird, waiting to flee my cage.
Yes, I know all too well that I'm not the man
but in my paradise, yes, there I ran.

I’m broken
Fractured in the place underneath the core
Where the structure of existence and foundation lie
Where the texture of abstract thought has torn

It’s the phase when faith and creed are shaken
Reveling in the freedom of what the revelation brought
Wrought ceaselessly by the eons of perilous times
When then the vain and futile plans have come to naught

It’s the sinister void of all reason and purpose
The rupture in the framework of the mind
Slivering away, slowly caving in, unreeling
Till all the unholy fears are lived and wholly realized

Conflicted amid the ruins of lust and judgment
At the site where reflection has lost its drive
I’m frayed deep within the heart and spirit
That I love and loathe all of it at the same time

But still I strive to mend my errant ways
Trying to make some sense of it of all
Reticent and remorseful for the wasted days
Withered away in shattered pieces that took their toll

And yet the more I ponder the more I become flawed
The façade of phantom memories remain unspoken
Like gods and monsters at the table patiently awaiting
For the tipping point, unbalanced where I am broken

My greatest fear is as a worm
tunneling through my veins
getting into my brain
and I listen helpless as mortality tick

I fear what's within time's walls
to hear the ticking of the clock
fearing the chimes of thirteen
fearing the key's click

I fear of not being asleep
and hear the footsteps
of father time
pacing the halls

I fear to count my minutes
to plummet into dreams
in the dark vastness
of vast gloomy fields without skies

In the vortex of being, a stillness whispers,
echoes nothingness, in chambers of silence.

Existing without essence, without the figure itself,
navigate chaos, without a compass of mercy.
Being is a burden, non-being is a torment,
the void extends into an endless abyss.
The pain of chaos, a lament in the wind,
a silent scream, in which I lose myself.

In the dance of time, steps without destination,
where being is chance, and non-being is divine.
The search for meaning, in tortuous paths,
reveals the irony of idle desires.
Post-eternal is the lament of an age without a face,
where being falls apart and non-being is heartbreak.

But in poetry, there is a meeting in the refuge of rest,
for the weight of being and the chaos that I tame.

 
affliction dear please afford me this confession
assorted pain dances in my mind tormenting me
the ghosts of my children's childhoods

I see their baby faces
not enough food to sustain their grumbling bellies
they still visit me in my resting state
I see their young faces knowing I failed them
they haunt my existence I see threads wait more like nooses
troubling the present trying to hang them
 
none of my grown children want anything to do with each other
too many bad memories
still basically living in poverty
born in a pit of mother too young
a welfare trap seeking to stay generation-strong
 
I gave them up for adoption
though I still saw them
it was a desperate attempt to save them
sadly genetics have a say
and my children struggle much the same way I do
 
anxiety hits us all when one is anxious we feel it coursing through us
connected or tethered to each other
my son writes just like I do
a family trait my dad did before me
 
sacred honesty, I feel the pain of the world
I feel like I've let everyone down
my idea that good prevails over bad
died when my children were little
I am bitter with regret
I don't believe there is a lesson

I clutch my covers childishly  
And pull them close  
To burrow into the warmth of my sorrows.  
The chaos of years gone by
Have become nothing more than  
Settling dust and distant screams,
And this bubble I've created  
Has become quite cozy.  
 
I have snapped the necks
Of a dozen versions of myself.
Their ghosts linger  
As if to taunt me  
With glories and regrets  
Of my youth,
And their skin and bones  
Clutter my halls.
 
I hesitate to emerge  
From this state of reflection
And mourning.  
My soul is tired,
And my mind is plagued with delusions  
That keep me stagnant and afraid.
I still fight with shadows  
That I cannot see.  
 
To stay is to die a death  
More tragic than the grave,
And to move is to risk  
Shattering to pieces
The remains of my fragile being.
To be stone, to be glass,
Or to be free...  
Dare I?

Change is such a funny little thing.
Our daily repetitive burnt out lives, longing for a slight difference in what is brought onto tomorrow.
Because one simple change can be all it takes for somebody to completely hit rock bottom.
But it also ought to be one of the most unexpected, subtly frightening things.

Because that night you see, things had changed so much for me.
Your soothing words flow like the lullaby of death and the silent impact is most disastrous.
For that night what seemed so simple, was far more impactful than anyone ever could have thought.
Because now with another on my mind I need to learn to not get so distraught.
Because growing love from another isn't something I’ve taken as the greatest grain of salt.

Though I find myself more angered at the one who’s eyes I meet in the mirror each morning.
Because I hadn’t thought I’d truly be ready to love after such a long period of mourning.
I guess love is a silent killer.
One uncaught and untamed, bringing little lies down in a bed unmade.
Nobody is ready for when love finally sets in their air.
Their breath consumed by the chemical balance of another, and the love woken from a deep slumber.

And here I thought I’d never be in the warm embrace of another.
I’ve wasted so much time grieving a loss that was not mine, to find myself under a suspect light.
Because need not get me wrong, I didn’t believe that love would be once again mine.
So it’s an incremental set of fear that I somehow have to get by.
Because looking up into the sky, and thinking of somebody new is something I didn't think I’d have to do.
At least not this soon.

It’s true what they say, “Believe it and it’s already yours,” because I’ve believed I’ve loved myself since the end of my mourning.
I just didn't believe that the love I gave myself would eventually be rewarded.

And until I did, what was already before me.
Became so much more clear, that cold winter morning.
Your text was unexpected, but it was needed.
Because of you now, I believe I can grow my love with you, in a healthier way this time as I perceived it.
 
Because although it’s somebody new, I’ve learned to stand my ground.
And not take advantage of the little words with such a powerful impact.

Because those words, I Love You, is what I hope to say to you, at the end of our life contract.

...(and other stories)  
 
 
It's taken years  
[hard fought and battle torn]  
from first memories— to this very exhale  
with pen in hand  
to find even small-ish comfort  
inside a skin  
that should have always been  
my safe home of harbored self security,  
an abundant wellspring flowing healthy current  
 
"Oh to dream dreams as that once, little girl"  
 
Honest as these thoughts are  
and as I will the words to be,  
sort of scouring clean  
my humanity  
en prose,  
it's not the whole truth of it  
when haunted cringes  
worthy of the finest self-hatred  
still randomly  
plague and poke  
their particular echoed torment  
piercing hard  
rebreaking brittle bones  
 
I crack open way too easily, even now  
shame and embarrassment spilling forth  
finding a way   
to bubble to the surface  
through red angry scars,  
that even thousands of written words  
never seem to fully heal  
 
Leaks of boiling blood and marrow  
are an end result  
of 'a mother's love'  
distorted by time-space,  
childhood fractures and  
my own voice's silencing  
 
Arbitrarily disoriented  
lost and losing myself  
hearing faint sounds  
recognizing rot  
memories of name calling  
slaps in the face,  
thighs,  
belly  
or any jiggly bit,  
was purposely tattooing reminders  
 
Instant flashes — heartbeats beating old rhythm  
I watch as my inherited black blood  
slowly escapes each tiny fissure  
of tainted acid ache,  
burning a sad trail of total disappointment  
infused by inferior-ugly  
 
Oozing obsidian outrage  
breathing in pants  
like the rage dearly loves                
while it breeds,  
growing  
taking control  
 
"I feel my chemical composition rapidly altering"  
 
At least I tell myself  
I have that super power—  
skills learned in captivity, I muse,  
creating and recreating,  
forcing by will  
scabs to form and bones to mend  
 
Etching hope into willed reality  
with each gloss,  
shade  
and contour—  
colors dawn from blackest night  
born bursting the daylight  
 
A spectrum opening  
the vastness of possibility  
and the proof to makeover a dark identity  
into a full array of beauty  
 
 
 
which always laid beneath                
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               

In the abyss of the deep, only grey matter reflected.
My breath was swept away by a witch's broom.
Secrets of dust were under a rug.
Astonishment took over like a surprise.
Magical, a flying carpet goes over my head, like deception.
The spell of time enthralled me with its flickering eminence of expiration.
My candle was hidden and about to burn out.
Hands on the wall, 6 o'clock, my attention was arrested.
Straight up and down, a power broadcast.
The thief in the night came and ransacked.
   
My captivated spirit.
Creative virtue in my morality and conscience is gone.
My heart becomes melancholic lachrymose.
Sorrow in my thoughts, words, and actions.
Demons tricked my mind so idle, it's an intense question.
Longing for my lost identity, I tried to see.
I try to reassemble the art within me.
The fire burning inside of me was smoldering.
Tears underneath, the burning books dampened the air.
Choking respiration.
   
Vacuous temperance.
Cold, sparce, barren, then empty.
Suggestion becomes removed, voided.
The canvas of my imagination, endlessly dark.
Space upon space, as I found no solidarity in motion to ground myself.
Twisted, warping, shrouded expansion.
Through the hallowed echos.
Far beyond, past tohubohu.
Uncertainty served as the torture of trying to remember.
Forgotten dreams, when immediate vision is woken to reflect.
   
There is wicked unrest in trying to find semblance.
Stirring up what was underneath, chaotic, confused depth-perception.
Everything changing, wonder feigning.
Amassed concentration.
Mystique became a turbulent blackhole.
Inquisitive intrigue, nullified to nothing.
No way to escape this gravity.  
Fallen through, weighing situation.
No rabbit hole, nor coming back.
Oblivion, struggle.
   
Profound like-comparison and literal meaning blended together.
Only the proof of skulls and snakes in my failure to conceive.
Mind separated from heart.
Lobbying and catering, physical, carnal mortality.  
Rather than forgive, accuse with fact.
Hold someone responsible and accountable.
Point a finger, hide a mirror.
Dullard standards.
Sensed in any setting.
No absolution of life, innocence, freedom, truth, and purpose.
   
Eloquent luminaries, perplexed.
Loquacious language, lacking.
Choosing to surrender, I give into it.
The subjugation of reality and insanity.
The thought police handcuff my decision and will.
Remind me that I only know one color, when I gaze.
It's the same as the prison cell of my ambition.
I am In between, nowhere.
Acceptance of infinite resolution, impossible.
Loss of inspiration.

How many people have to die in these streets.
Rest in peace my brother, I pray you finally found peace.
It would be a lie if I didn't say I never thought of death.
There's times I feel I'm all that's left.
You've been taken in all your good, I'm left after all I've done wrong.
Life has no remorse and carries on.

I bury another brother, but I can't let them see me cry.
I know what happened, just can't get my mind to understand why.
We sat laughing talking bout things we've done.
Young Cats don't understand what it means to live under the stress of the gun.
Lost my brother at the young of age of nine.
The image of his blood all over me still haunts my mind.

Look in the mirror bearing marks from beatings past.
Some seem they'll still be here after I pass.
Three in the morning I feel a pain in the back of my head.
My fifth birthday sprawled in the floor not sure if I'll soon be dead.
Eight years of this every day.
Developed my mind to this is loves way.

Took all I could and the catalyst takes affect.
Struck back leaving my demon like they had been placed in a wreck.
Fear of the repercussion I ran.
Thirteen years do the only thing I can.
Walking to schools in the morning a foul stench in the air.
Find a dead body laying in a ditch but for the most no one seemed to care.

So I ask again how many people have to die in these streets.
Rest in peace sister, I pray you finally found the peace.
Million things haunting me from the past after all these years.
Tu Pac said it best that's just the way it is.
She was much younger than me walking the line.
I was proud of my little sister, yet some drunk took her before her time.

Learned early on I could take the abuse and I wasn't too bad at the same with my own hands.
Gained a whole new crew of friends.
Making money for the first time it seems, afford to do what I need.
Little did I know each shot, snort, and smoke just planted an evil more seed.
Never knew this was going to so early send me to living hell.
Waking up everyday six by eight cell.

One year released, to the same streets that made this beast.
Knowing in my mind, no one cared in the least.
Life full of irony.
Old enemies decide to put a bullet in me.
Brought me asking the wrong question of why?
As hard as I was in life I was ready to die.

So I ask again how many people have to die in these streets.
Rest in peace my love, I pray you finally found your peace.
Your beauty no way I could think of anything that compared.
Wasn't til you had been buried, I knew your grave was shared.
Vengeance filled my heart, the one that took your life deserved to suffer.
I wished I had never introduced you to these drugs, now I pay with the knowledge, I killed my child in the womb and its mother.

I'm not asking anyone to show me pity, I created my Hell.
But help you understand the man I came to hate so well.
I grow so weary of the life lost in these streets.
I pray you all find your peace.
I pray none of you grow to become me.
Open your eyes to what you're doing, God gave them to you to see.

I pray hard that one day I finally find my peace.
Try my best to keep the ones I love now from living in these streets.