Song of Myself

I’ll have anything that keeps me whole. I can no longer rely on self — self-love, self-loathing… sacred self. Always loving, always leaving, always returning to this familiar square one. It’s just as well — the offspring of my urges — the burial shroud.

But the world doesn’t care if you are or are not there. It knows how soothing it is to sink into oblivion — and how despairing.

River and road and rail — to myself I lie until quenched by the morning sun. I put my thoughts to bed, but my body rocks, shakes, shivers, shudders… silent. Drowning in the tides; a war is inside my veins. Trapped in the flume, lost in skies of powdered gold, I am showered by the empty hope. As I’m advancing towards the ground, I can see my fears so clear — always rising, always ringing, always bleeding the courage from my fickle bones — my fickle heart.

You confuse me with your riddles, masks, games, shame and your sudden generosity. I swallow until I go blind; obliterated and helpless to the commands. Wipe your dirty hands on me — you don’t care if I’m asleep or I’m awake — my body will ache for you. Always begging, always borrowing, always stuck, living on this bitter planet. Whatever tomorrow brings, I hate that I’ll have to wake up and see.

Explain and exhaust and exhume. It seems I’m not breathing. I am the fog that settles on the grass at dawn — but not as beautiful. Wet and cold, enveloping everything in rotten shade. Time has turned inside-out and I believe that I cannot make time for the holy rollers, and soldiers, and clerks, and children, and gravity — fixing me in place, always watching always waiting, always winning me over.

Chased and caught and I cringe at the bottom of the bottle. Far from grace and certainly indebted — ball and chain I drag through the dirt of a thousand ages. Is this forever? To think I’ll feel and fight and falter, on and on and on until my hair turns to ash and my skin turns to dust — like an hourglass running out of time.

I know my place, but it doesn’t know me. Always anxious always attacked always another at last again. My hot breath steams the glass that pushes my face back into the shadows. Unsteady and stumbling forwards and backward and up and down and what when where why do I find myself returning to this familiar square one.

Madness and money and more. When words have me down, you keep me up — at night when I’m sick and shaking without you. The right attitude escapes me and this lack of reason reminds me I’ve got nothing to lose. Fill all these empty nights, calm the aches stop the shakes — you clear my mind. Like stardust for sadness, you’re my antidote.

I stumble out of the room and run up a tab on my hardened soul—which is nothing more than a sliver of the moon, swallowed up by the expanse of sky and stars and space. My paycheck in the mail is already burned and bent over irrational absurdities. I fight the urge to swim in the criminal springs, but even the best of me is lost to the hype and hyperbole.

Together and torn and tired of running this rat race around my head. My sanity is slipping like the sunshine dipping below the skyline. I’m digging and diving and dancing to this song of myself that no longer deserves to be sung. I wish you could see the stranger next to me — the hollow shell of my meat and bones. I’m a cat in a bag — I’m on a losing streak.

If heaven falls, I’m coming too — just waiting to drown, and this time I’m going down. Always leaving always laughing always lying to my stupid self. I have seen a lot of fools but I’m the worst of them all, picking my flesh off each bone until there is nothing left of me. Nothing left to be. Nothing left to see.