At times I am gaseous,
Formless,
Toxic,
Barely visible to the eye,
A haze on the periphery,
A vaporous outsider,
I am chemical unknown,
Free in the air,
Drifting aimlessly through existence,
Evidently harmful to pleasantries,
Allies retreat from my vapour,
I fear I am carbon monoxide,
I’m a pariah,
Social mustard gas,
Noxious to upstanding dialogue,
I don’t belong out there,
I belong in an airtight container,
An oubliette of four walls.
Beside me perches a dark omen,
An avian herald of ill outcomes,
An eye of Odin,
Such cold hunger in its obsidian sockets,
Why has he come?
Is it the end so soon?
Twitchy and cautious in demeanour,
Its beady oculi looking through me,
Perhaps focussing on the ripe spirit within,
I am carrion to this bird,
I know it,
But know not why,
He is joined by his murder of murderers,
A pack of little sin-eaters,
I can but only sit and watch in return,
They are no pale horse,
But to look upon them is to look upon true death,
An omen of the end.
There was a clown I knew,
Who had forgotten how to laugh,
Rendered grim by alcoholic smog,
His painted smile had become begrimed,
Layered in mahogany muck,
A metallic sheen of depression,
His outfit was tattered,
Ripped asunder by times razor,
No more a flamboyant ensemble,
His clown shoes were worn through,
Revealing yellowed toenails,
Comedic value turned to dirt,
No joy was to be seen in in his visage,
The years have oxidised his smile,
Sections of his form blowing away like iron dust,
I longed to tell him,
His laugh was not to be found in his glass,
He scornfully chuckled and downed his poison,
He’d rusted away.
A sickening snap,
Metallic jaws latching on,
An agonising let-up in my journey,
This travail through life,
It was a clumsy miscalculation,
A wrong turn,
Blades of foul intent,
Or perhaps a deterring voice,
As cutting as any trap,
Bones splinter,
As my plan is crushed,
Smashed betwixt dragons teeth,
On my path forward,
A trail into foggy terrain,
It is laden with such menaces,
Each mutilated step,
A new trial of metal jaws to struggle with,
Ever after.
Trauma is not a contest,
There is no prize,
Nobody claims a medal for suffering,
We all oppose its scythe,
The piles of glass it reduces us to,
When life shatters,
Like a church ransacked,
My pile of jagged shards is no greater,
No more lofty,
No more fabulous than yours,
Your agony is my agony,
And vice versa,
Pain takes no sides,
Has no favourites,
It just hurts.
Hiding in this sleeping quarry,
My mind is ore,
Hidden by a stony facade,
A rock face,
It’s not remotely precious,
Coal and iron and zinc comrades,
Merely one of a million,
Rough in a sea of diamonds,
Demons descend with their mining tools,
Clanging against my willpower,
Pickaxe climbing over pickaxe,
Chink after chink cleft asunder,
Mining for its own sake,
I know not why,
I am no treasure to them,
Not a gemstone,
Just a stone,
A pebble for the grinder.
When people look at me askance,
It must be due to my inhumanity,
As if I escaped from a zoo,
I’m a troglodyte,
Beneath even the street throng,
A subhuman,
I long to be human,
To be more than this primate clown,
Playing with sticks and berries,
I want to be one of them,
To evolve from this crude form,
To walk shoulder-to-shoulder with them,
Instead I shriek and crawl,
Not yet evolving into a man,
I howl in trees,
Revelling in my genetic inferiority,
Instead of maturing into society,
I shelter lifelong in the primeval habitat I made,
A habitat of reclusion,
Out in the wilds.
Under stormy skies,
My mind is an art gallery,
A museum of ideations,
An asylum of nightmares,
Portraits and landscapes aplenty,
Disparate images of chaotic vivacity,
The price of entry a forlorn spirit,
The exhibits are of heart-breaking intentions,
Fantasies scrawled in ink and charcoal,
Grisly outcomes and self-chastisement,
Brushstrokes wishing for things sour,
Held in frames specked in self-harm ruby,
It is a dark place,
A hell I keep under wraps,
A location best left locked,
But at times it trills out,
Calling to that theatre of suicides,
And impelling me to stay within its halls.
The man was akin to a bough,
He has had a long life,
Knowing whether it has been good or foul is impossible,
He can no longer speak,
It can only be read upon his gnarled bark,
His worn face,
Stories carved into knots and wood,
Legends and legacies,
Storied mosquitoes in amber,
History written in oak,
This storied gentleman stands tall,
Thought scored by the years,
He is a monument to his own life,
Paragraphs in timber,
The years read out in rings,
A gigantic redwood in the forest,
Bare in the winter.
This desert of existence ranges onwards,
The dunes a maze of decisions,
Scathing to the touch,
My camel became bleached bone eons ago,
I’ve forgotten the sounds of life and flushing leaves,
The only caress from blades of desert wind,
I ache for an oasis of respite,
To rest my fèet upon regal silk,
To wash my hands in something other than grating sand,
Some pure water filled with praise,
A compliment not from a forked tongue,
Before resuming lifes journey,
I see pyramids filled with gold and felicity,
Dancing a slow sway upon the horizon,
The sight galvanises my steps,
Just a handful more miles of bland waste,
Or is it mirages that give me hope?
Has the heat of being gotten to me?
