I am languishing in the river of love
where it parts on both sides and
passes me
leaving my dry and cracked skin
thirsty for touch.

I have no crutch on which to lean,
only a vision of a time,
sublime in its entirety,
locked away by
an amalgam of years yet to be.

 

I am withering away
into the ether of darkness.
The bonds that hold my flesh to this place
are breaking one after another.
Worries for the future… snap.
Worries for the past…snap.
Worries for the present…snap.
Ambitions and dreams,
hopes and yearnings,
all twisting apart and unraveling,
falling into depths of apathy
that taint my mind with
cynicism.

 

The future is a wind, one that beats me
with the inevitability of its coming.
It chills my bones and blood,
and soon my flesh cools and comes apart,
the music of my existence silent for a moment,
a moment I witness as eternity.
This eternal moment is defiled,
poisoned by human conditioning.
My mind is a well that is with lead,
my soul impregnated by diseased atrophy.
My heart has become pitted stone,
unchanging except for those
who chip away at its already ugly surface.

 

Yet… is it so?

Are the reflections of my being
fun house mirror projections
of my past come to haunt me?

Or is it
That I am really so insignificant
that I am missed on all sides by
those who really matter?
Am I blind to those who would
reform my heart into gold?
Have I spun myself a dream of understanding
only to realized that it is a web of doom.

 

Am I the spider that consumes myself?
Am I the hunter who lies in wait for the one
who makes my footprints?

Or am I a coyote trapped in a gully,
who chews off its leg rather than be consumed by vultures?
Do I move by chemical compulsion?
Am I a slave to an existence that,
regardless of my drive,
binds me to solitude?

Am I trapped by my nature to live a short life?
That surely would end at my own hand?

 

Please god,
let it not be so.