The Poem That Shouldn't Be Seen

I

Am screaming into the void of misconceptions and horrid

Broken little perceptions.

I

Can’t see.

The glass has shattered all around me, lays at my feet

Like a dog so long dead I thought it was asleep;

I

Misperceived.

I

Don’t like broken mirrors.

The slivers of warped reflections always find their way

Under my skin,

Create wounds no amount of antiseptic can keep clean.

And pity for a long life unlived always worms its way

Deep into the chambers of my heart until

I

Am crippled

By a strange little grief for the inanimate thing

And the little lives it will never live,

The impossible heartbeats somehow still stolen.

I

Can’t understand

The fine line between a passing loss and the all-consuming

Cycle of anguish so habitual it takes my hands with

A knowing smile and snaps them.

I

Flounder.

In this world, in this town, in this body,

I

Flounder.

Struggle for the air to scream into the void another day,

Fight for the words that never like to come,

Go to war over pillowcases and mattress firmness

To find some semblance of peace in disrupted sleep.

And at the end of that long battle,

I

Collapse

Against the soft sheets and stare into the unyielding darkness

As gentle fireworks dance across the fluttering shadows

Created with the wide hands of the moon,

As those shadows creep up and swallow me whole.

I

Don’t dream in absolutes or see glittering landscapes

Covered in sunlight and fresh warmth.

I

Fall.

Into the darkness that tugs, tugs, tugs

All-day long at my pantlegs with the nagging persistence

Of a child with snot running down to their chin.

It is neither sweet nor miserable,

The space the darkness has carved for me

But a humbling spread of nothingness.

I

Slip away

Into the vastness of this barren world

That greets me with the friendliness of an agitated politician,

Waiting for a reason to gut me

And send my twitching remains off to the graveyard.

But its arms are spread wide in a gesture

That forces me to question the fear turning sour on my tongue.

I

Wake

To the same darkness that held my slumber.

Quiet breaths tumble into the empty night

While the world shifts in its sleep.

Where did I go if not to dreamland?

What tormented me if not a nightmare?

If the world is full of pretty things and hospitality,

Buzzing bees and the banging background of wars,

Where did I go to find such silence?

I

Hold my breath

In anxious anticipation that the emptiness will steal it

Right from my lungs

But the night continues its march toward morning.

It isn’t until the first rays of honey sunlight

Tickle my face and poke through the curtain that

I

Breathe again.

But the damage has been done, hasn’t it?

The emptiness that darkness carved into my belly

Still replicates and copulates until

I

Fall again

To my knees and scream back into that void,

Hear my words tumble uselessly over themselves

As something within me claws at the walls

Over and over until I am bleeding those broken perceptions

And old misconceptions out of my mouth,

Onto concrete chalk drawings

Where years ago

I

Scraped my knees

And cried ugly tears full of regret and remorse

That burned lines of acid down my face and etched into memory

The horrendous feeling of failing, failing, falling, and hurting.

It hangs over my head like the sun stuck in an eclipse,

Rattles around my brain like the echoing screams of a trampled mob.

I

Am failing,

Falling.

I

Am dying

And no amount of convincing will peel the terror from my teeth

Or heal the festering wounds from the sharp bite of anxiety.

The poison is in my veins and it wouldn’t even matter except

It isn’t a new phase, speaking to the barren fields.

The empty pews.

The stadium is full of a man trying to do good with tears in his eyes

And another, brought by obligation, kept by pity

Both surrounded by the pressing weight of silence.

This is old territory.

Bled on by my ambitions, slaughtered.

Stained scarlet by the innocent sprout of belief in my chest

Ripped from me and butchered by the vacant seats

In the bleachers,

In the auditorium,

In the classroom.

The words are gentle nothings fading into the night,

That black abyss,

Though they were meant to be more.

So very much more that

I

Weep

At the glittering dust of glass in my palms,

The sparkle of what should have been.

They will continue to be, my words, despite the open mouth

Of the void swallowing them and my dreams along with them because

I am eternally unheard.

_________________________________________

Well, this is as different as it gets for me. This is a remarkably long poem, a far cry from my instagram days of ten-word stories! I'm glad that the poem is being seen after quite a long vacation in my brain.

Remember, I have a ko-fi if you want to check it out too. Otherwise, there's plenty of work on here that if ready to be perused.