Helixes of retrospection Coil together from the days of Fragmentary self-reflection, Always seen in different ways. The Memories, withholding hatred As I couldn't have before, in Scenes more sensory than dated Show me just a little more than What I had remembered; plainly My own whimpering and weakness, All the shame of my ungainly Worthlessness remained to speak, hiss Venomous but true. Ineptly Did I try the task, and wanting Was I found. And still I've kept the Sting of it, forever haunting Me in idle recollection, But I see now also threaded, With remembrance and dejection, New dimensions of the dreaded Failures of the past. A twining Thread of details flowed adjacent Facts as I had known them, lining Up where once the thread of hate spent All the energy in torture, All perspective tied to burning Self; that thread receives retort, for Now perceived by simply turning Over points of view are passions Unexamined which could offer Some experience, some rations From within the mental coffers. All the pain of wounds remaining As the price to first remember, Pull the line across the staining Layers of the bleeding members Of the past; withdraw with sorrow Deeper shades within the gory Wound to take into tomorrow. Bloodred hues and ochre story, Richer for that painful richness, Shows the desperate parties clearer, Lets me be a better witness. Small mistakes and those severer All displayed less passionately, Memory more fairly meted Once released from obstinately Coloring with shame defeated. Strip the crimson tint from off the Actions past; beneath, the varied Interplay of needs that often Bobbled in the air, were carried On in bruised and welting purple Or unable to fulfill were Left to fester in their hurtful Monochrome desires. What will or Fantasy or motive may have Led to certain situations That before ourselves we paved while Knowing half the expectations; What delusions bolstered taking Roles that clashed incongruously With our sad remainders, faking Just so nearly-ponderously Our desires and real affections? Questioning not how; just peering At the needy introspections That performed, and with their steering Twisted candor through denial And encouraged them to alter Thus themselves to give requital To their feelings, then to falter. Watch the prancing cryptofeeling Change its shape and masquerade as Love within an instant, sealing Sadly such a plan mislaid as Providence. Chimeric colors Mimic patterns for survival In the wasted psychic dolors, Is accepted on arrival; Symbiosis. With another Finding joy to not be less than But gestalt, so hope recovers For a while impressed but destined Not to thrive in this relation. That elusive feeling wavered In its camouflage and station, Could its counterpart have labored Under similar conditions? I will never know that answer, But can have the recognition Of my own confusing dancer: Loneliness or desperation, Likely both in turns portraying Love, but breathing love's oblation Can't be love despite its praying. It was loving but too needy, Couldn't offer up desiring From it's emptiness so reedy; So it found itself conspiring. As did I, at first unknowing, Hoping we were truly loving, That we were in truth bestowing, Yet that gift was far above me. With desire, but not for someone, Rather to become enveloped And fulfilled by one to come from Fantasy still undeveloped. We were not each other's choices, Yet we chose each other clinging To the hope that feelings foisted Could be true; they stopped the stinging To believe. And I, deluded, Couldn't let it go; I craved that Quality that truth precluded, So although I could have waived that Stupid act I didn't. Rather I persisted dyeing fibers Hoping newer strands could gather And could change the hollow cipher Of an able lover I am. So in all the tones of desperate Pantomime can I espy an Interim devoid of respite. Trying on diverse delusions, Failing to accept the object That my port was an illusion, Left adrift again, a prospect I took cowardly and shaded Differently my being hoping Misery could be abated. It was all deceitful coping, There was not a chance; my trying To contort myself, veneering What I am, its fruit was crying, Merely multicolored tearing. It was shameful but a lesson, So we learn through painful dealings With each other of the stress in Form and makeup of our feelings. I was pitiful, disgraceful, The unmanliness I showed is Lightly dealt with called distasteful; But the wretch can still be loaded With a burden demonstrating In its wanly colored vestige The remonstrance integrating In oneself a cringing message; In a self-elucidation Of iniquity one can be Freed from a deluded station, And can come to understand the Feeble grip upon emotion That a withered soul possesses. What's the color of devotion? What's its shade when it impresses On the soul its proper palate? I can't tell, but in this cording And recording the invalid Vows of yesterday's purporting Panoplies of passion, all the Plumage of misled connection That I blush at but recall to Know with stoic circumspection, I relive my lie of courtship And discern the tint of those who On delusions are supported. After all the glinting close to Vivid blotches of exacting Woe, there dapples memory with Embers, washed out tones enacting Ghosts of masks and tremoring fists. Fading, false veneer with trappings Of fidelity; or wanting. After that the color sapping Out, away, into the daunting Depths of time, elapsing steeper. So my recollection slackened, Leaving memories still deeper Where beyond the thread is blackened.
Author: Nick
Frozen separately in waking
Frozen separately in waking Convalescence, base obsession, A ritual encroaching on Subsistence, living gets replaced. Corpse-like the results in breaking Troughs, the vacuum of impression Imploding in the void and spawned Again in waves one fears to face; Then the wake of slumbrous moments' Undertow recedes and closens, As distant as it's far away, As dangerous as yesterday. Spend an episode in coma, Living in the world of feeling, The world of fearing to exist. The bleak disease that grips the core Menaces the spirit's home, a Second's depth between revealing The fear of shrinking sandbar's mist And dead men swimming back to shore. Wake again with these contending Shades, and crawl inside the bending Demands of rectitude and time. A year has passed, or maybe nine. Crippled once, effects still linger, Weighing down with sand the conscience That knows the necessary tasks And doesn't do them, knows the cost But has others pay. Whose finger Points in mirrors of remonstrance, But hesitates though knows what's asked, And buried in the sands is lost. How the sands outpaced it, crested The already half-arrested And sinking thoughts, how much consumed In time, in terror, in its doom? Conscience shivering? If thawing Frees the mind in stasis, set then A flame to sear the worldly, base Intimidation from a brow. Set a blaze to burn the gnawing Frost of soul that lets regret and The shame of fear progress, but wastes All else inside its frigid now. Melt away the indecision; Grow the body from a vision Of life and time alike employed, Renewed again to be enjoyed.
Alcoholism
The person who I am is not the one To live the life required, he is undone. Me too. There's nothing left to salvage should I fail this time; the smallest crystals would Be grinded into dust. The bloodied shards Beyond recognizance, no further charge, No third or fourth or fifth chance, atoms smashed And gone. His final ultimatum lashed To my ribs and apartment door. No more! The proclamation, no and never! For A lie was given for a truth, therefore That lie needs turn to life, or purified From death and fury and if not: demise. But bloodied still my mind, necessity Demands that actions reap their recipe Of lack of self-control; I cleaved unto My anger, stripped of any power, through Iniquity and rage I was remade. I had it, had it tenfold times repaid. And when I thrashed and writhed within my skull, I cried out for salvation but I pulled My only love inside my hatred full Of impotence, imprisonment. Was I Denied assistance? No. Ask rather why I sought omnipotence from human love. Instead I made myself a vision of A vicious wretch, inhumed and bound in pall, And damned myself imbibing alcohol. False anodyne when first invited in; My twisted mind more wrung subsided in Its wet brain for an hour before it drowned In chaos and reformed the world around; Just suicide in acts, in words no sound. A hostile environ by hostile draught Dissolved one moment, then the next one fraught With anger in inebriated scope; The refuge in a momentary cope Becomes a trigger–newer, shorter fuse. It morphs my rage, it doesn't disabuse Me. Hatred of the jail of circumstance Becomes the need to free with my own hands This sickest soul from blackest dying through My death; but though I've ever held that true, To kill myself would be to kill them too. Who suffers when I self-harm, is it me? A vacuum of self-torture, can it be? It cannot; when the severed muscle hangs, The limb is crippled and the phantom fangs Return at night to gnash the missing piece. The bleeding someday stops, but where's release? What day returns a revenant to life? I tell you, none. Though maybe someday strife Recedes, a loved one lost is not replaced; And likewise does it daunt a loved one faced With fear that my mortality's outpaced Their every effort. Blinded; lustful death Antagonizes all us through my breath. A hellscape is a mindscape with itself Alone, unreachable upon its shelf; In monochrome the planet turns and turns, But nothing grows and nothing's ever earned. As such my meager coin I spend on booze When there is nothing else for me to choose. When I'm alone and all the plants have died, And when the stagnant winds have not replied, And only insects come to eat my hide, Intolerable is the sober world, Its diffidence with my own insults hurled Upon my head like stones. Uphold the law! Pay death to weakness and remove the flaw I am upon the Earth. It never does. It minds itself with almost-silent buzz Until I cannot take it anymore! It’s the indifference of this hell that scores Me more than anything else. When I feel Too much yet haven't strength to turn the wheel, I turn to metamorphosis to heal. The world won't change; I try to change my mind, To change my mental state to somehow find A corner where these things do not apply. To warp my inhibitions with the lie Of drunkenness; to see the world and see Myself transposed within a fantasy. I wish to wake in dreams from nightmares real; In altered states the state of Earth repeal. Somnambulating in a stupor still, I smile one second, having had my will Succeed; it shatters, and I'm left to kill, To maim, to recompense stupidity With pain, to turn the judgement onto me; To find cupidity is always there, The lens has changed but it is still my stare. I tie the noose while struggling to get loose; An explanation, never an excuse. Within the shadow of deliverance Addiction creeps and preys upon my sense. It's come to this: I either learn to quell The sickness, truly learn the lesson well; If not, then I shall die alone in hell.
The withered shoot will desiccate
The withered shoot will desiccate, The sickly sapling coruscates Luxuriant and loved a while With tender fondness, as a child Who loves its greenness but abates. It's not enough to briefly sate The wandering eye's need with spates Of evanescent, dying smiles; Grow up, for love won't reach the dead. The sturdy tree we designate As worthy, and determinate Not on those weeds without the guile Or otherwise tenacious style To grow from their own lands their fate. Grow up, for love won't reach the dead.
A need is only worth so much
A need is only worth so much; It has a value one must touch. And, finding one's not worth the cost In severed lines, in maelstroms lost, Needs make one recognize his crutch. The poison flowing from the ducts, The poison bleeding from the cuts, Is liable to get you tossed. The price is steep, and one is weak. If ever found in quicksand sucked Beneath insanity or clutched By helplessness, the hidden frost Will choke you first; when dread exhausts The one who never sought it such, My price is steep and I am weak.
A fool in search of love from anywhere
A fool in search of love from anywhere Can always trick himself into a care; Is likely such a sap he'd fall for you, And fancy that he found himself so true A love materialized from thin air. Infatuation and a lonely stare, You surely aren't taken unaware By deedless words, a yearning boy's ague; Take care returning lonesome lovers' cues. I'd never blame you should you search for snares; You're right expecting that the sails could tear. It's safer seeing with a skeptic's skew; For you could pick a stranger passing through To do whatever i could do more fair. Take care returning lonesome lovers' cues.
A bounty on my head, and brine
A bounty on my head, and brine Surmounting conchblown elegies Ahead where drawn's the hellish whine. Resounding dawns of dread unease Endowed upon cliffshelves and salt, On eddies calm and felling seas. The bounds of haunting, bed of fault, The pounding on the cell and screams, The bed that's gone which dwells in vaults. I'm found a pawn left dead in dreams And ground to squandered shells and sand; The edges on the mellow streams; And now the longing shreds the hands Around the wrongs that fed demands.
Constant nightmares
Constant nightmares, yet their pulling Shackles–daunting, vicious, spiteful, Full of pacts and bonds of sorrow– A delightful null of actions; Haunting quite, yet also lulling. Soon the cull will heighten on the Day I lack more mulling flights of Ponderous inaction; sullied Might long gone; a manufactured Strength; a hulled-out, frightened non-thing. Fondly might I choke in gulfs of Hack positions; on a tightened, Miserable racking onto Right out dull rat-racing packed in Haunted nights if pulled by waking. Pulled from blighted, monstrous living Acted in my skull, it might be A delight, the fact of bondage; Sad the plight and want, but cracked once Sultry sunlight wakes all, yawning. Condemnation lights refulgent Lanterns backing future sites and Days of vultures, black-winged, gauntly Fighting; stultifying tasks of Squandered sight of hopefulnesses. Full of tightening and long hours Wracked by dullness and delighting, Conning, acting for indulgence Right? Consumers jack my future And my soul; I'd rather sleep on.
Sleeping everyday for more than
Sleeping everyday for more than Twelve hours keeps my wits away, at Core, themselves annihilated; Heaped; decaying in their store of Velvet enervated weeping. Silently alarms are screaming. Scope now narrowed by the eking Out which arms demeaning, hopeless Cares; denial in the dreams of Ropes, garrotes, repeating trials.
Their Sorrow’s Blood
But aren’t there unhappy few Who ever locked in stasis rue The dissolution of a dream That once they might have barely gleaned Which withers right before their view? And nothing–nothing!–they can do, Their powerlessness leading to The all-consuming vicious stream They feed with all their sorrow's blood. The dream is lost, they’re aging too, And suffering is never through, Though once so close to it it seemed. The tumor grown from dust, it screamed, And every second since it grew They feed it with their sorrow's blood.
A place for my poems 