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A Search Within Has Left Without

In a wakeful contradiction,

It lays fact between my fiction.

Tangling subatomics,

It unravels, as its tricks spin

Deeper, toward the outward . . .

                             It won’t let up,

Until I give in.

 

 

Over matter, lay my mind . . .

I tell a lie to pass the time . . .

But there’s no reason nor a rhyme —

                             Less still, a purpose?

I search for something

To remind my mind

        That there is truth,

That isn’t worthless.

 

 

But as always, failure appears

In a sort-of amnesiac continuity,

And my reality lies to my own mind,

Just as well

As it succeeds in its futility.

With destruction as its manifest,

It tells me that I stand my tallest

Upon two buckled knees.

 

 

Just as faith will find one’s doubt —

                  A search within has left without.

It seems that an answer, once sought out,

                  Will be left lacking its question.

My truth divides itself,

                   As the product

Of infinite misdirection.

 

I try to substitute a reason, for a rhyme.

But with no lies left to pass the time . . .

                      I swallow a dose of ignorance.

 

It goes down

Smoother than the truth.

 

In a war that started with a truce,

This world betrayed my faith

To show me:

 

       That I'm only tall enough

            Once I’ve been

                                                  cut

                                                    down

                                                           slowly.

 

 

A pill too large to swallow,

         I think I’m choking on myself

Or the irony of asking,

           “How could I be so careless?”

Here I stand, Barely standing,

                   Consumed almost entirely

By my own dry-heaving self-awareness

 

 

Each night I am left to fight the fears

That my nightmares create;

I’m still running from my past,

                   Yet, haunted by my fate.

They walk beside me always,

                   Shadowing wholeheartedly —

They exist as a duality,

Both “apart from,”

                         And “a part of” me.

 

 

In truth,

These ghosts have taught me very little,

                          Aside from what I hate.

But, I've come to learn, not to fear

                          The forceful hands of fate.

For, I shudder not, at the thought of destiny,

                          Or the inevitable in time . . .

Instead, I fear the eventuality of the choices

That were solely,

And entirely, mine.

 

I fear that my will may be

Of enough influence, alone . . .

That fate itself may collapse

Beneath decisions like my own.

 

Or that I, myself,

Might be constructing

What destruction I will find

Among my shattered spirits

And convictions,

In these depths, to which I climb.

​

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Written by
bad-luck
32 / M
Published
Jul 3, 2018
Lines·Words
80·411
Notes

"Bad Luck: In a Wakeful Contradiction" is now available on Amazon in paperback!

 

Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1691941182

Tags
#reflection#duality#self#fear#awareness#faith#failure#beauty#futility#shadow
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