If I could feel no pain,
maybe I would comb my hair,
run my fingers through it like curtains.

If I could feel no pain,
I would be unstoppable.
No story unwritten, no person unnoticed.

But if I could feel no pain,
I would not be me.
I am a refraction of my feelings.

Sometimes the fragments--    of myself
like shattered glass reappear.
My old glasses, my weight, my memories.

They all pour like dark rainwater down
to the waves, when I am alone and I am
teetering on who I am and who I see.

And in that darkness, in that cacophony
that screams "Worthless! Nameless!"--
I can see someone else behind the haze.

A little kid, no more than ten or eleven,
with his backpack on and a smile on
his face. Innocent annoyance in his eyes.

I can hear him too, hear his sense of humor
as his mother loads him into the van. The
sun just rising on the horizon behind the house.

The early summer air is like a fresh bouquet
of roses, but then I look slowly around.
Notice the other people surrounding him.

Remembering the late nights, the slow declines.
Remembering; but every thought slipping away,
like a nightmare where the hall is eternally long.

And I see my fingers, their callouses, taking my
eyes from the broken things around my feet to
the messy counter; the room I've grown inside.

The lock was shut, always. My hands always
dry and cracked, the mirror fogged and the
lighting as poor as the terrifying feelings inside.

And it yells again, "Worthless! Nameless!"--
and I am still sitting and watching paint
dry on my mirror. Watching me decay.

Seeing now, my cheek bones as they sink,
as my face begins to turn ever paler,
as my hair begins to fall out.

If I could leave this pain I would throw it all out.

If I could feel no pain, I would be a jester; sitting
high in my palace, no bitterness, no faults.
I would be a fool in a hat and suit with money.

If I could feel no pain, I would still be afraid of
everything. The siren sounds coming from my
own mind at night; the horror that I left locked in.

The buzzing of the locusts' wings on my window
flicker through my ringing ears, my destroyed,
ruined atmosphere. My meditative chamber/pile of ruins.

I listen to them tap on the glass, their wings turning from
buzzing, to fingers scratching, to accusations of my lies.
They tell me I'm unsure, that the world is as I see it.

But why would I listen? What insanity in the dead of night!
Isn't it pretty to think so? Isn't it pretty to think so?
I can see the drilled abscesses in their skin.

I crawl beneath my bed, escaping them. But I feel
their talons all over my skin, trying to pull me into
the world that I can't see, that I can't reason with.

They scream "Worthless! Nameless!" and I crumble
like overly baked bread. I am the crust of the loaf
in the sink after it is cut, I am the vessels' thoughts.

They are all within my mind, they are all within my
own delusional world; where I can see or not see whatever
I want. Where I can forget about the people I've loved.

And where I am in my little place, my mindless thinkless
chamber above the clouds, I don't have to think of the
beautiful people I've destroyed, consumed, manipulated.

And they yell "Worthless! Nameless!" until--
I can't bear to hear them all scream out loud--
Their teeth and eyes glaring, the torn twill--
I feel it around my fingers bowed--
like a great ship, the edge phased--
Sinking beneath sodden roaring waves--
I can't hear myself think, I'm amazed--
I will end up in the same graves--
SO WHERE DOES THE OCEAN MEET THE END?
OR HAS IT BEEN MASKED ETERNALLY?
I CAN FEEL MY THOUGHTS WHILE THEY TWIST, BEND--
IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL INTERNALLY.
But in the real mental insurgency,
I am losing my mind in urgency.

So if I could feel no pain at all,
I would be the same.
Bitterly, utterly similar.

Boring, worthless, nameless.