This Present Stranger

I.

In this I give my all,
I bare my soul & open each floodgate
One by one...

All that has gone before is noise
Is pride & boast,
Is shadows creeping outward in suffocation
& I shudder to wonder why...

I can count my passions one by one
& taste my lies in bitterness
Left behind & devoured 
By this vast half-awake moment by moment existence
Consumed great ideas & shit bad habits
As progression dragged me onward.

So this is my despair, to rip my being apart before you
& know you can rebuild me,
Leave my broken pieces scattered across the wasteland of my soul
To know I would allow you to rebuild me,
It is my weakness.

Need to be forever alone to remain my own pure creation,
To know my mind & know it is my own, my dream...
& to prepare for love is to deny love access
To the darker corridors of my perception
& I save the worst for a last ditch effort
On the edges of my deceptions.

In decay I fall away from the world you all inhabit,
& I want cold detatchment
For fear of deep involvement
Creating deeper resentments...

& I could not bear to hurt another,
Or to hurt again

I believe my own defenses until they become obsessions
& leave behind an image I no longer recognize
Because loneliness absorbs but doesn't define

& one by one I make my bricks
& place the doorway @ the heart of my maze
& complete the courage to be a coward
& run from affection like fleeing infection
Like percieving deception hands me decieving perfections
@ the touch of her lips
& no one wants this



II.

Suddenly my world had developed desires
While my hate put forth flashbacks to finer times
& I remember wanting to be more than I am
To follow vague impressions as fast as I could,
As far as it took to uncover the meanings
To pierce the dreams that have haunted me
& to find a goal for my destiny...

Remember how it felt to bleed,
How every sensation created a need,
How fierce & delicious the cravings?

Companions seeking end-of-everything magicks in seasons of shade,
Stalking through bone-yards as the memories fade,
Tore apart secrets in half-drunken hazes...

Mourning for victims of this once perfect nation
My childhood deadly & my youth a fiction,
Your innocent daydreams invade my decisions
While granting highlights of passion
To the verbal precision
& I dare to defend what no longer seems precious
In the hopes that someday we might be receptive.



III.

Cynical, cool, & visionary for one day too long,
Too much, taken callous & assaulted in the early morning
By all the various nightmarish entities I've conjured up
For my own amusement over the last few years
& they gather on the doorway's edge
Across the threshold, arms interlinked
Shuddering in cold contemplation...

Nothing but stolen purpose
& useless & counterfiet emotion,
They exude patient hatred
& glare @ me w/ bloodshot eyes
Through countless mirrors
While telling me of my death
& they send greeting cards 
& wish me ill will
In their own special way...

They gather together the bits of myself
I have abandoned throughout my bitterness
& wrapping it into one great shitstorm
They invade my sleep & accuse me of sins
I long thought dead.

There is no rest for guilt or shame,
Only a period of remission for revenants
Of an emotional cancer turned malignant
& spreading.

W/out the aggression of my old ways
Or the wisdom of my last days
My defenses are reduced
To cliche's



IV.

Beyond fatigue the source of despair prods me into a secondary awareness
Drags me out into the predawn morning for a dance w/ angels
& I greet the rising sun w/ the kisses of a vagrant
Set on the annihilation of the past

& as fictions fall away the sanctity of the moment of truth overwhelms me
& I know the true meaning of desire
It grabs me,
Clenching my intestines in clammy fists,
Sends hollow shivers along my spine,
Humming in time w/ the rhythm of the rain
& I know all is not well w/ us all...



V.

Then it becomes a trial,
An ongoing struggle,
& the days & nights become each other
& blend together into one seamless mesh of slow time.

Time leaks, dripping from the rust of weeks,
Of months dragged out,
The whole damn ball rotates around that blazing furnace
& we all spin together

& in sleep somedays become numbered
& nights are lost forever
& fantasy becomes farther away
& I smell blood on my hands,
Stains on my sheets,
Have dead flesh in my stomache,
& sinister memories leave me strung out
& ashamed to be alive

If my world were what I once thought it would be,
All huge backyard & married @ 20 & college degree,
Maybe then I could sleep in peace,
Maybe then I would be @ ease
W/ these sudden pure impressions of the coming of age.

We cleanse deciets w/ a slow form of piety
While vanishing traces of memory
Fleeing the terrors of the loss of meaning
& I feel my world now coming to eat me
All coming apart @ the seams of cool mornings...

Greatness flexing up against my walls again,
Left treated, mistaken, & beaten w/in
As they cleanse me & leave me shallow & hollow
& there seems to be a missing element,
A fragment out of place.



VI.

Try to force the mind to sleep,
Try to silence the images that come crawling up from deep w/in
The vivid deaths that haunt me
& I am tortured by my own mind,
Forced to deal w/ the dawn
Bleary-eyed & half-dead

I tear away the covers,
Lay twisted & alone on the sheets,
Stare @ the digital alarm clock
& wait for the numbers to tick away my life

I am being timed, this is a race, but I do not know where,
In what direction...
Nor how far away the finish line has been drawn

I have had my fill of these secrets,
Of never meeting the eyes of those who pass me by
Of ignoring tell-tale phrases w/ the polite nod & quizzical looks,
For my passions & my muses have been discarded
In a vain attempt to appear respectable,
& in doing so I have made of myself a fiction,
A perverse creation,
A puppet to be toyed w/
& thrown aside...

I only do what is asked & expected,
& deny desire w/ the self-conciousness so necessary to a man of honor,
But w/out the piety that would lend a sacrificial meaning
For I am moral & ethical only because it has never occured to me
That I could be otherwise.



VII.

That there might be more,
That this might be the start of something better,
That I may rediscover that golden road I once followed,
This is my reason for continued existence...

That I may discover love pinned under a steel girder
Or beneath a cracked foundation,
Just waiting for fate to come along,
This is my dream of continued existence.

That I might be blindsided by good fortune,
Or run down by compassion,
Or greeted by a perfect stranger w/ true friendship,
My ulterior motivation...

For these are the things that keep me hoping,
Keep my scars down to a minimum.

W/out the constant ongoing monotony I fear I might lose myself,
Lose my edge, my carved out niche, & I have only burdens of routine
I have become an endless string of habits & there are no others,
No additional members in my circular patterns.

& when change does come,
When the little death claims its next victim,
Will I be ready to mount that hearse
& ride it through the next millenium?

I question my resolve when the moon sets,
Look out beyond the horizon,
& curse the stars as they fade from view

The sun rises & I spit.


 

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