Oh woe is me,
Blast it all and fiddlesticks,
I have failed once more,
Come up short,
The art drops to my side,
Like the gladius from a fighter,
Defeated,
The poem had to end,
It was hitting all of the hard points,
Richocheting off the sloped plate,
Not embracing another’s heart,
The ink runs off the page,
Cannibalised by the dark,
Woe is me.
I find my minds eye is clouded,
Marred by ocular madness,
By the squiggles,
Shapes appearing like a vinyl,
Little lines dancing about as couplets,
A disco in my vision,
A riot before me,
No colours,
Just monochrome,
They silently play tag with my focus,
Frolicking away before I can make them out,
I seem to have a million friends in my eyes,
Or is it my imagination?
Degeneration?
Insanity finally seizing control?
Like our frames of flesh,
Our souls can sustain dents and cracks,
Harmed by barbed situations and jagged tongues,
Our essence bleeds out of these wounds,
Manifesting as turmoil and angst,
Our internal peace shattered into fragments,
Like flesh they can be knitted anew,
Our nirvana of vitality restored,
But the tools are very much different,
It is not the demesne of the mechanic to fix,
The workshop lies in our own minds,
Meditation and self-love are the utensils at hand,
It takes perseverance,
Listening for the hurts of our spirits,
Taking needle and blowtorch to each wound,
Incense and peace and shadow work,
It’s an ongoing inward pilgrimage,
To get back to ourselves.
I am afflicted,
Diseased,
Infested,
Privy to rigor mortis of the lungs I fear,
A piece of me turned renegade,
Blackened internally like rot,
Respiring becomes a feat of heroics,
My torso doubling over like a crushed can,
Hailed by naught but wheezing,
Breaths like razor blades scrape at my lungs,
Each compression a cut deeper,
Superheated talons across flesh,
To speak of it is blood specks on a napkin,
To hear of it is a death knell,
To an ensemble of splutter and hacking.
I feel off-kilter,
Somehow weighted to one side,
The mind hangs in the balance,
A set of scales nestled in our egos,
Ungodly yet ornate,
Lifes events are as weights on one side or the other,
Life can bring circumstance of both good and bad,
Too much of either can be destructive,
Positive and negative,
Success and heartbreak,
Narcissism and misanthropy,
Use these events as lessons not additions to your id,
Either weight dropping is a fell stroke,
One way leads to decadence,
The other a fall to adversity,
Both are forms of insanity,
Both will destroy your own soul,
Both are evil by different modus operandi,
Do not allow your scales to dip,
One must strive for balance,
Be as a pendulum,
Map a safe travail through lifes hills and valleys,
The ups and downs,
Protect your minds integrity.
A novel new blight has arisen,
It is upon the tongues of all,
With the same frequency as hellos and farewells,
The covid virus,
The new political and media months flavour,
An ailment embellished,
Despite its lethal effects,
The initial symptom being a destruction of all sense,
Eagerly followed by the choking of the weak,
Indeed let it be known it is a foul affliction,
Lives shattered and irrevocably altered,
Not purely by this virus itself,
But by legislative hammers of feeble men,
Flaccid controls in the guise of genius,
It has taken over,
But what of the others?
Those recieved of other illnesses,
Cancers and strokes and fractures and derangement,
They are skipped over,
Verily banished from the facilities meant to aid them,
Sent to form morgues within their hovels,
Souls perish every hour to these curses,
But the darling of the elite takes the stage,
The pundits preach fear overblown,
Fear the covid,
There is only covid,
But I ask of you,
Does covid matter more than all other ills?
I have a tumour,
I feel it pulsing within my skull,
A neoplasmic fiend,
A frankenstein creation of my own heart,
My cells joining its unholy legion,
I know from whence it came,
I breathed in those cancerous cells,
They breached my lips,
On a vessel of her red lipstick,
Her nightly ritual,
She drew me in,
Like a spider playing a violin,
A trap of an embrace,
A witch in white gown lingerie,
Obsessive oncology,
This amorous disease ravaged my form,
Playing jukebox romance ad infinitum,
My humours sent into spasms,
My virtues turned askew,
Blurred eyes,
I ought to be alone,
Give me a bottle of amber,
My own radiation therapy,
I’m unclear of the prognosis,
But this love is cancer.
The day roars in anger,
As I awaken bloody-eyed,
It bares its dragon fangs to me,
Demanding I return to the aether,
It threatens my chakras,
So I turn to the gemstones,
They are eternal war advisors,
I turn to the agate to calm me,
It’s fiery aura pushing me ahead,
I watch the ruby rage,
Impelling me to take on the day,
Unakite takes on purging my nightly malice,
I clutch a pristine diamond,
It animates me to be a force of good,
Amplifying opal carries the lance and standard,
Tiger eye suggests a practical method,
The onyx points the way,
While the pyrite drives me to stand up to the dragon,
I gaze at the howlite,
Quietly it tells me to forgive the day,
They serve as bulwark and bandage,
The dragon shall be subdued,
Whether through heart or force.
I find that my ears rebel,
A battalion of brass instruments,
Crying directly into my imagination,
A constant assault upon myself,
Sounds that aren’t there,
There in my dreams,
There in my waking hours,
Ghosts shrieking,
But nothing is there,
White noise,
Crackles and sharp pops,
A gradual piercing of the cranium,
A bell ringing just out of sight,
A drilling of the oil in ones brain,
A bull in a cerebral china shop,
Static droning,
Ear plugs are a laughable stop gap,
Maybe one day my hearing will fade,
Will I still hear the frightful sounds?
Or shall the shrieking carry on in earnest?
You apathetic dragons,
In your boardroom hoards,
Remember us?
We little people,
The public,
The ever-hungry,
We were the ones,
You trod into the muck,
We were the ones,
You left out in the cold,
We were the ones,
You used in your schemes,
Our chump change wasn’t enough,
You had to take our homes,
And the skins off our backs,
But we’re only animals,
And when we feel cornered,
We’ll even hunt dragons,
When the resources expire,
And the fires burn low,
We’ll climb your piles of gold,
In our dingy rags,
On shattered limbs,
Mad hunger saliva,
You so-called elites,
You’re going down too,
Even your power won’t save you,
From the knives of the poor,
It’s the end for you too,
We’ll eat the rich.
WorldofHarley 