The blisters formed and bubbled, Your skin began to burn,
Desperately trying to extinguish all light,
While feigning such concern.

Smothering out the flame, cutting off the air,
the charring smell is making me sick.
No, It's pretending that you care.

Your hands once so soft, have now grown callus,
harden from the "home" you built around me,
Each brick tainted with malice.

Gasping tightly around my ever failing, feeble form,
Looking around frantically,
only to be met with your cloudy eyes filled with scorn.

I lay there in the ashes, the remnants of me,
Darkened sky of smoke surrounding my vision,
All thats left is seared debris

And that is where you left me.






But that is where I refuse to stay.

~

I can feel every eye roll
And all I did was pour out what was left of my soul
Looks like I might be the only one to see it from that angle
Like it's painful
I brush it off and project as being humble
Really I'm only diminishing what makes me emotional
It's just standard business as usual
A series of unfortunate events themed carousel
The victim blaming has become so casual
That I somehow become the spectacle
Put a screen between us and then I bet they'd care though
Convinced themselves I'm some kind of animal
Chomping at the bit, waiting to say "I told you so"
Waiting for said moment from the get go
Was it always the plan to poke at the volcano?
The saying only mentions a bear, though the volcano makes it more...what's the word...I don't know, disasterful...
That's not a word but that's what came to mind cause the mind isn't always rational
Whatever, anyway, on a long enough timeline you're bound to get burnt, we're all flammable
A majority of us are expendable
Not essential even if dependable
Reluctantly invited to the annual shiit show
The HUD flashes on arrival
"WARNING WARNING, CONDITION CRITICAL!"
But we've been lied to before, for example
Take a look at religion and the political
What's actual?
What's factual?
And what's just another game by Hasbro?
What are you looking at me for? I don't fuuckin' know
Try tying it to a white flag and running it up the flagpole

©2024

But I know…

this blending of a warped (time) continuum,
the future resting on shaky table legs,
errors of habitual inconsistency,
one on top of a prior, on top of…

we pursue regrets, misdeeds, theorizing
that we can fix the wobbly mess we instigated,

that can we smooth the ruckus that
the unknown in surety is bonded to be
surly serve up buffet style,

we help ourselves to troubles so attractive,
like rice thrown at a wedding, dead seeds of
messes yet to come

old regrets freshly regretted, for we waste
not even
what we wanted then
even now!

for we do not proper value the passing of each momentary,
but weep and mourn the entirety of years corrupted by
wrong-headed mish-mash of longings,
swift stupid inexcusable acts of impulsive weaknesses permitted,
so that we dust
the dust encasing artificial flowers,
that are so faded that the dust mispermits one
to fool themselves
that they were once ,
burnt orange vibrant,
like the optimism of a sunny day gone and hoped for
just once more

yes, I know why…

<><> <>

*Burnt Norton by T.S.Eliot
*

“Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future

And time future contained in time past.
All time is eternally present 

All time is unredeemable.


What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility   

Only in a world of speculation.

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden.

My words echo
,
Thus, in your mind.
                                  

 But to what purpose

Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

<><><><>>


postscript

the rushing to my ever nearer demise
the dust suffocates,
the regrettables
have no half life,
and I dust,
I know
if I do not,
I choke…