You see these shoes?
Cheap leather and cigarette-stained lace,
Sickly green and beggarly lemon,
Their oversized and gaudy visage inspires mockery,
And rightly so,
They mark me as a punchline,
An unfunny slime of a jester,
Shuffling through life,
My garish shoes applauding my languor,
Each plod as a joke not too witty,
Inflict your pity upon me if you will,
Or laugh your guts out,
I am not your entertainer,
I’m just a clown,
Let go by the world.
That prevailing miasma,
It hits your eyes first,
Injected by longing gazes met,
Washing like a tsunami to your heart,
Insidiously at first,
Veins burning in the passionate causticity,
Propagating in your chest and thoughts,
Euphoric over time,
An addiction like any other,
Racing pulses and endorphins,
White-hot and devious,
A venom taking its course,
Destructive in the end,
As toxins are wont to be,
Culminating in cardiac collapse,
Your heart split like a vase,
Shards lost in love letters unsent,
And those same eyes bleed aqua in turn.
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.
They call me a beast,
Better suited to the wilderness,
Out of sight and out of mind,
Poking fun at my snout and feral grimace,
And my growls of nonsense during dialogue,
Derisively patting me upon my bestial mane,
It’s true that I feel lesser,
I’m subhuman,
Flea-ridden,
I stumble across societal rules on all fours,
I’m a flawed simulacrum of a man,
Despoiled by minotaur horns and lizard eyes,
It’s not possible to tame a wild creature,
And my pelt isn’t worth mounting,
So leave me to my slavering and howling,
I’m hardly domesticated,
So why not run free?
I am a beast after all.
Down those hospital stairs,
That chilly room is a sterile graveyard,
Clad in cold iron doors,
In place of stone markers,
Names replaced by codes on little tags,
Souls preserved just past the point of death,
Their stories will never rot though,
Even entropy can’t rewrite time,
This body here was a tyrant among tyrants,
This one has saved orphans abroad,
Over here we have an artist to succeed Picasso,
This one here was a master thief,
The lights behind their eyes are dark,
But these husks are still receptacles of stories,
People reduced to their bodily memories,
Held in iron caskets,
To be burned to ashes,
Or rusted away by time.
Our minds hold secrets even from ourselves,
Like a vault with no keys,
An Alcatraz of singed synapses,
Memories and cognitions that require captivity,
Killers we made in our own pasts,
Creatures of harmful alchemy,
Its halls are patrolled by second guesses,
Steering you from its cells,
As compartmentalization is the policy of a hurt soul,
It’s a death row without an end date,
And it is rightly veiled,
Because if these demons were freed,
And the traumas relived,
The world could burn,
As surely as a peony wilts.
Buy one,
Go on,
You have to be in it to win it,
That’s what the house says,
Chortles barely contained,
These rectangular tickets to the good life,
Emblazoned in gold and crossed fingers,
They promise you the world,
The odds ever cackling in your face,
So try your hollow luck,
Gambling against a stacked deck,
Scratch your time away,
In minor increments,
Dignity scored away with each inch,
Each time the card offering scraps,
You inevitably fail and buy another,
And then another,
Ad infinitum.
I hope these words find you honestly,
I’ve only ever wanted a quiet life,
A pastoral life,
Not an easy life,
No such farce exists,
But a serene one,
I’m a simple soul with a complex mind,
I was never a prodigy,
Not a Beethoven or Hemingway,
I was never a villain,
Not a Joker or Lecter,
I was never going to unmake the world,
I’m neither yin nor yang,
I’m just grey,
Striving to be nothing,
I just want to sit and see the world pass,
As easily as you read these words,
I just want a simple life.
Sometimes sleep can be like visiting a menagerie,
A mad array of mental toys,
Dancing and cajoling and fighting,
I close my eyes,
Logic takes the exit door,
And the toybox opens,
An entire universe of prisms and colours emerge,
Faces and pyramids and music,
Skeletons dancing against my backlit skull,
All things blended into storylines that make no sense,
It feels good,
Unconsciousness is my minds best therapy,
The crazier the dreams,
The better the rest.
WorldofHarley 