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Haiku is not true

poetry by any means:

formulaic = dull

They strung me up.
Not by the neck,
that would be
too quick.

No.
They intended
a slow torture for me,
bound one foot,
bound my arms.

I heard a voice:
Escape is possible
if you want it.

And I was alone.

At first I struggled.
Swayed back and forth
from the wind, and the weather and the
pain,
to no avail.

But eventually,
I learnt to just

Stop.

If this was my life,
So be it.
I was not going to provide
a show of my misery
to any God.

I saved my energy,
learnt to live with seeing the world
pass me by,
learnt to see things
from a different perspective.

Torture?
This was nice,
relaxing even,
I could hardly feel the pain,
could block it out
almost entirely.

Perhaps this is what I wanted
all along -
an eternal break.

Fool that I was,
I failed to realize
the torture was not physical
but mental.

Slowly I grew bored
in contemplation,
in limbo,
in apathy,
in atrophy.

I remembered the voice:
escape is possible,
I remembered
everything I wanted to do
everything I still yearned to do.

All the beauty and the goodness
and the possibilities of Life
made me ache,
and I could not block it out.

Suddenly I saw:
this was not torture
but a test.

My time of suspension is up,
These are but ropes,
not chains.

I know the way out,
and I am not afraid.

There is work to be done.

Stagnancy living
in colorless morning.
sunflower sunshine disconsolate
the rooster sings
eulogies and clamored verses
ringing alarm bells in cockcrow
cough drone weary eyes
dew-tied memories of
reverie weepy
aching legs and chest pains
cotton cozied pills crashing
underneath plastic caps
prescription taps
Tylenol Benzedrine
relapse body thinning
cities wearing
ergonomic tragedies
encircling business quarter
daffodil rooftops
steady rain descending onto
varnished sidewalks.

Addicts pirouette dazzled the
hazed-minds dreaming of
Aprils and consistent harmonious
ecstasy visions stampeded
by the brickwork flickered with
lamplight demons overcast this illusory Babylon
trembling flesh retreats into the shadows it came
and nightmares remain similar to days before and after.
Recycled horrors lightning flash abhorrent death
whether they be wearing black suits or black robes
scythe or satchel the wide eyes scour gaunt alleys
for fixes to fix the monotonous life bewitched
with false material variety anxiety deity
Desecration City express way to depression
oppressed people hide away in simultaneous acts of
camouflaging fireballs
spiraling into decadence.

Diamond days few and far between
communal woe reverberates through skins
and skeletons in opening of top story windows
during Winter. Despite the fragrance chaos,
pandemic paranoia,
extinguishing elation,
All bodies continue to be
alone.

And there you were,
Black and white.
Emotionless: No excitement, no euphoria, no sadness, no fear,
Void of art, void of darkness, void of light.

How easy it is to be distracted away,
From you, from that of which is so important,
Yet your dullness can be compared to a lonesome tree which for a hundred years had had no sway,
Or a handsome husband who is nothing but impotent.

How deep, how dull,
And yet attractive to some.
And in these wee hours when the very air seems to lull,
And I slowly drift off hoping to tear through the fabric of space and time,

I pray I don't get distracted.
Because to understand that very dullness,
Is to conquer and to finish what I started,
And to blossom in all a nerd's fullness.

Pure anticipation
   at the moment I
      can rush into your
         open, waiting arms
            and brush my lips
               against the smooth
                  softness of yours
                     is what propels me
                        through the dizzying
                           dullness of each day.