[thisislife]

There are a multitude of maladies that I might surrender myself to–
In truth, the names of despair are legion–
And seated in their long yellow rivers I would wallow my way
To the inevitable confession,
The repentance,
Punishment,
Short, nasty, and sharp;
Deep-seated in my mid-brain I can feel that this is what I crave.

And would it be that I could call out from my lolling tongue:
“These are my bloodied hands!”
And at long last, wandering eastward with every passing winter,
I might return to the seat of purity, the wonders
Of those flowing boundless hills.
But what thirst is left to be satisfied when none remains?
And an inkling in my battle-brain shouts at me to repent
While every fiber of my being roars back in a tidal wave,
A sweeping deluge,
Ripping upstream and apart, through rapids and rip-tides,
And into my eyes whereby I conceived of the strangest things.
And upon waking could remember none.

The names of despair are legion, but the harshest is paradox,
From whose scorn I flee.
But while I quibble and quake between the highest glistening walls
And the gauged sloughing pits, I am starving in the midst of an abyss.
In this space it is the fruit of the basest mind which blossoms,
Unfurling,
And although its nectar is poison
I must eat.

I can see my feet walking in the darkness,
But they are not on the path.
They must not be mine, I tell myself,
But there is nowhere else left to go.