The Dark Arc

Dear reader,

I'd like to say “everyone”,

  but I'm not even sure who that would be.

It implies a wide audience,

  of which I am hardly certain.

    There are really only a few people who need to read this.

    I don't really want to think about who they are at the moment.

    Please forgive the frigidity of my address.

  Death comes to greet everyone.

The only question is the timing.

I myself am terrified of death.

The idea of time passing without me,

  even without my awareness of it,

  makes my toes involuntarily tingle and curl

      —as they do right now.

 

  My fingertips, too, shiver.

  A stone sinks into my throat,

  and my stomach grows taut.

 

I don't want to die.

  This has been true since childhood.

 Thirty years have done nothing to dull the terror.

  I can only hide from it for a time,

    or conceal it behind false bravado

      or immediate distraction.

  I am always conscious of my death.

Certainly suicide seems entirely antithetical to such a mind.

  It is, yet it is not.

  In a mind that screams,

    “Never let this experience end!”

    —this multifarious,

      multisensory pure awareness of existence—

      there exists also a permanent sense

        of being overwhelmed by every impetus.

 

   For whatever reason,

  the balance of my memory has always been skewed.

  A smile impinges on every sense

    as readily as a frown,

        and yet,
when the smile is gone,

  the elation that accompanied it disappears.

   Yet the frown never leaves.

 And where once a frown has been met,

    I fear forever

      the appearance of the next.

 

 I am,

I suppose,

   simply a coward,

  terrified of the next occasion

    when my senses will prick me

      as I have been pricked before.

    And I am sadly very good

  at predicting the pattern of the future. 

  As of tonight,

    the pattern promises me an array of stabs and pain, or the fear thereof.

    The choice I have is between two terrors.

     One is permanent.

      The other may be shortened.

      I am afraid.

 

 

A Scream in a Hole

 

I just wrote

A suicide note.

 

 I don’t

 Even

 Have

 Anyone

 To address it to.

 

 

Waiting, Curled

 

I just want to share with you.

  Is that so wrong?

Why must it be so hard?

 

 I'm so sorry.

 

 

Fidelity?

You want to connect with
Whomever you want
Whenever you want.

I just want to connect with you.

 

 

Who Needs Help?

 

I guess
I am
Going
To die
Anyway.

 

 

Feeling in the Water for a Rock

 

But she loves
Only me
The way
She does.

 Can that
 Hold me
 Together?

 

Systems

 

Atheism:
  You get to feel

    Smart
  And purposeless.

Is there really an advantage to that?

    Faith
    May be needed
    Just to provide us
    With a foundation
    That gives us
    The security
    We need
      To live
      Without fear
      Of our lives.

 

 

It Was Already Too Late When Time Began

You'll
Never
Love me.

But
You'll
Wonder
What I was
Until the day
You die.

 “Was.”

Because
To everyone
Who matters
I exist
Only
In the
Past
Tense.

 

 

People

 

People
Are always
Trying
To pick
And claw
Their way
Inside
 me.

Others
Call it
“Interaction.”

It makes me feel
Like

A

Skittering
 bug.

 

Such is life

Such is death
Such is the stench
Upon my breath.

 

 

Sludge

 

I am
An abomination
Of a human being.

 

 

Psychiatryst

I have 
The soul
Of a coward
A liar
And a murderer

  Yet you tell me to love myself.

You would do better
To destroy me
Before I do
What I was designed 
To do.

 

 

Nightfall

 

I feel like tomorrow I die.

 

 

what a terrible day

 

 “i love you,”

i said

 

  …and a loose

          cloud

        of vapour

             appeared

         in my arms

 

     and dispersed.