Fear From Complacency

People who deny

You the chance to act honestly

Often undercut empathy

With the fear of being erased.

To be oneself

Has almost always proved risky,

But it gets frustratingly

Arduous when one’s identities are retraced.

It tears at the nerve

Between confidence and sympathy,

Criticism from complacency

Cutting crosses in your face.

She says she’s afraid

Because her very being is threatened,

She who’s being

By that standard subjugates.

Equally communing

Past your deliberate segregating

Proves tryingly absurd

As you blocked yourself from seeing.

Look at me

Without holding back your feelings

And tell everyone listening

What your posture really means.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snippet Of A Conversation

“Confront the facts!

You’ve hated yourself,

You’ve lived a lie!

You’re not what you present!”

 

“Shut up.

All persona is presentation,

It’s all a lie anyway

So what does it matter?”

 

“Represent someone else

And hide from what you really feel.

Is this what you really want,

Miss Freedom of Expression?”

 

“I’ll express what I choose.

My secrets are my own,

And does anyone really care

What I feel inside?”

 

“What does it matter

If anyone gives a damn?

What satisfactions comes

From dishonest expression?”

 

I Found Myself Buried

I was naked, around twilight,

Covered in dirt and leaves

Having been buried alive,

By life buried.

A crawling mass of moist earth

Composed of dismembered deaths,

Colonies of feeding decomposers,

And my own fragile ego.

I must have sunk

From grace down to dirt

And been planted face-down,

Neglected and self-misused.

I suppose I slept

Because I dreamed vividly

In colors more vibrant and varying

Than I ever felt before.

I’d visited myself,

Seen the spectrum of my being

Like so many blends of fantasy and memory

Shifting perpetually within.

Only after waking

I recognize the implication

Of finding myself alive,

Head-first buried in a hole.

 

 

What Carries Over

Sometimes I feel better when I imagine my own conscious thought is all that exists.
The feeling of being a disembodied psyche in friction-less space,
Emptied of all but the most critical pieces of my identity
And reassembling my complexities into a more beautiful shape.
As many times as I’ve done this,
There are thoughts and patterns that persist through me,
Some I’ve cherished, others I’ve hated,
And some I couldn’t understand or even properly explain.
There are pieces that never seem to come unstuck,
Fears, attachments, and my deepest memories.
There are images and vague connections I retain,
Like pen-strokes which remain even after they’re scribbled over.
A vague, off-beat rhythm seems to drive my actions,
Unfocused or out of sync with the environment I’m in,
Curiosity, obsession, and paranoia distort my tempo,
Playing my own tune, in spite of what drums beat around me.
I’m liable to fall carelessly into the beautiful or intriguing.
My heart snaps alert, when a note, by happenstance, complements my own.
There are ideas, perceptions, and sequences of thought
That feel more like hell and like home than any real place.
Whatever I do or imagine myself to be,
There are elements of myself that remain true.
Burdens I carry, gifts likewise treasured,
And I expect they’ll remain until my mind is permanently changed.

Transition Through Fear

Control your fear,
Deaden your senses,
Listless solitude is the perfect fuel
For an existential crisis.
I’ve slowly eroded,
Turned to dust and resurfaced,
I’ve un-become the thing
That hated who I was,
The thing that hated everything
To escape what it hated being.
I can remember trembling,
A dead weight swiftly lifted,
Before recognizing myself clearly
And collapsing to the dirt.
My body is a prison,
My brain the sadistic jailer,
Holding down its prisoner
At the bottom of a well.
A glimmer in the chasm
Made to bury shameful secrets.

Looking out, it screams,
Being seen like naked eyes.
Repression is a disguise as
Recognition imbibes pain.
I am the thing that hates,
Projecting but what it contains,
Nothing but the distaste
For what I was afraid of being.
Captivity is a ritual,
As survival is to pain,
Avenging a broken heart
Buried beneath cold sentiments.
Weakness, being me,
Being something ugly,
Guilty and fragile,
And tempestuously charged.
I’m become the domineer,
Steering everything to crash
For bitterness, the sake of
The empty shape I cast.
Without a real feeling
To tamper my identity,
I freely hate the feelings
I’ve hated holding in me.
You’re everything I need,
That I vehemently despise,
Reminding me what’s real
And why I’m not really fine.
My blood draws a stop,
Distress signals overload,
Impulsively shutting down
Self-awareness and empathy.
An empty shape won’t ease,
It’s an insatiable thing,
And I’ve almost eaten
Everything I truly love
To blind myself from seeing.
Now, I’ve given in,
Unearthed the buried creature
I’d sheltered in a cage
To keep it from ever feeling.
I needed space to breathe,
Shelter, so I could think,
Awestruck by the callousness
And brutality of living.
It’s a graveyard
And a hornets’ nest,
Fear not to be feared
Not being dangerous.
I’ve tasted the comforts of malignancy.
I’ve torn my ego from its shell,
That agoraphobic parasite
I clung to like a life-vest.
I needed strength,
And the safest place to hide
For a fragile little thing
Is deep inside its mind.
Revealing an honest form,
Freshly embracing empathy and connection,
I can finally face your solemn eyes,
Even though I’m terrified.
I’ll live with myself,
Finally, I’ll risk being me,
To live for these moments
Without regret in the way.
I cannot be changed,
But I can grow and adapt,
And if we can share a love,
Or a struggle, I’ll do my best.

To Those About To Define

I am a fractal

And all life is shapeless energy.

It exists in motion,

In a flux, or not at all.

Emotions are like fire,

Easily felt but hard to grasp,

Constantly in motion,

Never simply happy or just sad.

We’re all non-linear,

Even acting like we’re whole,

Pretending space is flat

And that basic shapes exist.

Defining us in terms

Of euclidean simplicity

Is an insult to reality

And the complexity of our souls,

Our being, our essence,

By any other word

Is too broad a subject

For your dismissive unambiguity.

No pill or prayer,

No final solution,

No common sense parable

Or well-meaning lie

Can fill in this space,

Open to interpretation,

Of dimensions vast outweighing

Your shallow view of life.

 

 

 

 

Vibrancy, The Shadow Unraveling

A braver me

Once hungered for the most radical,

The depths of pain and heights of pleasure,

Arts forbidden and obscene.

Looking for shadows,

The silhouettes of hidden meanings,

In music, words, and old philosophies.

All or nothing, or perhaps just me.

Everything to know,

To intercept as we compete.

Learning to express my ailments

Devoid of my identity.

 

A wiser me

Found meaning in shattered pieces,

Learned respect for my flaws,

And earned the rites of restoration.

Feeling through my being,

Pursuing dreams to their bitterest end,

Swallowing whatever lurks there,

And tasting something sweet.

Unraveling an eon

Of silent fears and insecurities,

Traversing the deathly path of nihilism

To know what I truly love.

 

 

For No One To Find

When you can casually bleed

While your psyche screams,

Congratulations,

No one else will ever see.

Your imprisoned esteem

Only needs to breathe

Once in a while

To keep from getting free.

At persona’s relieve

Feel free to release

In humbled bursts

What trembles underneath.

As awful it seems,

It’s only a need

Left unsatisfied

By conventional means.

Carry on incomplete

In your vital deceit

Until maybe one day

You’ll be eased.

 

What Do You Know?

Confused and/or vain,

Evil and/or repugnant,

Count the discrepancies

And steel yourself for more.

Perceptions are abundant

As insults and judgments,

And finding fit words

For yourself is a chore.

Impressions are often biased,

Labels often fall short,

Even platitudes of passion

And support miss their mark.

Life would be so muddled,

So indiscernibly complex.

Simplicity is transgression,

We’re beyond light and dark.

Solitude in expression

Mirrors bolder without eyes.

Honesty is easy

With an audience of one,

But self-revealed truths

Fall flat upon the senses

Leaving deep and shallow guesses

The best from anyone.

 

 

Vanity & Reflection

“Whoever do you want to be?”

The astringent mirror asks of me.

“Does the image your perceive

Contest the one that you believe?”

Of course, I cannot help agree

That what it sees is not all it seems.

Staring into my gleaming eyes

To glean from them what fears I hide,

And yet I know what I would find

If I looked straight through my mind.

I’m not what I believe or see ,

The mirror reveals and deceives

As what constructs identity

Is not imposed by vanity;

But, then again, it still is me,

As much as I am physically.

Pale and pallid, tired eyes,

And other feelings I despise.

“Why do you not answer me?

Who is it you want to be?”

I burrow through my troubled mind,

But nothing there solidifies.

I know I don’t want stubborn lies

But what I want, I can’t describe.

“I guess I just want to be me,

But I don’t know who I should be.”

The mirror replied,

“You’re lying.”

And I replied,

“Shut up.”