LOST, AT A LOSS FOR LOSS  (‘Full-Blown, progressive, symptomatic AIDS, early to mid 1990’s, Galveston Island, Texas)

absolutely
no success
here
so sold out
to fear
watching life
spin down
and
down
so lost
unclear
into these costly
black hole
years
of seemingly
unending
unseen tears
from ever increasing
multiple layers
of further
continuous
inner and outer
deterioration
never ending pain
the inwardly
silent
hurting kind
that seldom goes
away
in which
i drown
a little more
deeply
under the
increasingly
suffocating weight
of each
successive
passing night
and day
even here now
in this
sunken moment
sinking into
and through it
ever deeper
beneath it
into its darkened
stormy sea
of unforgotten
unforgiven
rotten
gnawing
past rememberings
now recalled
into which
all future hopes
all future
itself
disappears
as my historys
past
slowly unfolds
stretching out
down through times
deeply vortexed
ever spiraling
drain
here in these
late
still hours
of these timeless
sleepless nights
great
static voids
much too brief
escape
relief
beyond
my desperate needs
threadbare
hope
to either
one day
find
a way
to someday better
dream
or cope
though presently
neither
here nor there
within
without
i look away
i look
away

though still
pulled off
here yet again
into the
shallower depths
of my dreams
now weakened
ghosts
whose wearied
haunting
nonetheless
still
clings on
to better memories
of better
days
long gone
yet too few
here
remain for me
so much
of my once
more
lucid recall
diluted down
dissolved
as vague
as lifes
sweet ghost itself
for me
has now become
to freely
savor
anymore
if i could
only
more fully
tap back into
their
countless
missing stories
to once
again
more clearly
refocus
upon
every detail
and precious flavor
of their
much
too fleeting
resurrected lingerings
fullest return
where
i could
at least reexperience
and relive
to some
vicarious degree
some
much more lasting
inner sense
of being there
feeling
there
once again
or have perhaps
all my
progressively
disintegrating
already
threadbare hopes
like me
myself as well
both now
become
nothing more
than
some delusional
future
dead mans
desperate
futile dream
still either
way
within
without
i look away
i look
away