i'm the monster hiding under my bed
lurking just below the placid
surface of my own personal Loch Ness
and praying that i remain
a legend of the local townspeople
masquerading as those who
call me friend and lover
those perfectly content to take in
my slow crumbling facade
and name it history
roman roads meandering across
my features the ruts of those
early onset wrinkles which
threaten to out me
to scream out my sickness
a diagnosis of malevolence
hiding in my tightly wound double
helices the ladders i climb
as though there were salvation waiting
at the top
though Sisyphus would understand
my plight but more so
comprehend my incessant pursuit
of a false flag promise of
redemption.

but i can't escape the prison of my skin
my identity the crystal lattice of
epidermis holding in
the supernova of destruction and death
the famine after my insatiable need
consumes all nourishment for
i'm too much
too much need
much too much malignancy
spreading like a cancerous mass
consuming and metabolizing all that
is good and innocent.

do not extend to me
your tendrils of sympathy
of compassion
look upon me as the condemned
war criminal on the stand and
the Hague chilled to immobility by
the tales of my horror.

put me to death and think no more
of the fallacy i perpetuated
for decades spent offering
silent pleas for intercession and yet
unable to ever escape my transgressions
which live below the surface
in the deepest parts of me
intricately woven into those essential
parts of myself
a tumor grown into my heart
too close to the life-sustaining
machinery for any to dare extraction.

but i could **** every part of me
and one day i will
as i pay and pay my way to salvation
clad in sack cloth and my feet bare
praying for smoldering coals to
traverse searching for pain
pain to wash me clean
pain to fill the need for punishment
because i've learned that even
punishment which provides no
redemption
gives me the appearance of at least
seeking that which
i know i'll never have.

and after all these years
do i really want it at all?
would i forego any more pain?
could i even believe that i
have been forgiven?
that my slate had truly been
wiped clean?

even if everyone watched me
be washed back to infantile innocence
i would still know
always
my inner stain spread through my
entrails like some perverse
Rorschach test for reading by an
oracle who could proclaim
after my death
that the beast had been slain and
now they welcome the eternal
kingdom of god.

but do not call me martyr.

do not send pilgrims to my grave
do not consign me to Apocrypha
do not dilute
or contaminate the
sacrosanct of some
even if i always believe it was
superstitious *******.

they believe it to be real
to be holy
and myself the human stain should
never be near.

burn my bones and burn them again
grind them to dust and jettison them
to the remotest ends of the earth
where no foot treads
and my disease might not spread.

i flay the skin off my own bones
so no one else must.

do not touch me

leperous disaster
harbinger of the end of all things.

let me starve and rot
the putrid scent of my decay
finally dissolving the mask
and in my death i can't even
lower my face
dead eyes can't look away
but you couldn't know
that's how they've always looked.