Cinderblock thick
Why do you try to climb the parapets
This little heart of mine sings in a choir
Where dolorous notes emit percussive blows against the chest
Leave me to my cimmerian chamber,
It doesn’t suit you to pine away for an apparition
The man you knew is a specter,
A noctambulant wanderer forgotten, moribund.

The skies dressed in lachrymose grey,
As you stare at photographs,
Caught in an eidolon daydream,
But even in your greatest incarnation
You could not evoke yesterday,
Nor could I remember how to feign feeling.

I was cast aside,
Left in my melancholy,
Bereft of my ailing mind,
Imprisoned in mortiferous thought
Despondent to the fabrics of the real
And when I puzzled me back like a jigsaw
I was left with missing pieces,
Tenebrous figures pull at the light
To put out the light,
And in this last flickering candle,
Would you close the door to phantasmagoric fantasies
So I can introduce you to the man I am today,
The one you’ll never deceive or condescend
A true version of humility wrapped in masculine tenacity
I am more than meets the mind’s eye
A force of malevolence for those who dare upset my peace.

Dreams feel like reality and reality feels like dreams
Everything is intermingling together
Been off my medicine a few days, don’t know if I’m finding myself or losing my way
I’m not going off the rails
Emotions are in check
Just disassociating coming out the wreck
Numbness and blindness the medicine creates
The things you don’t realize until it’s too late

You’ll ask how I am
And I’ll say that I’m fine
Then you’ll give that look
Like I’m being snide

If you knew how my anger
was the last to survive
how affection eludes me
as I’m boiling inside

If you peeked at the shadow
snaring my thoughts
and the vortex of voices
pushing sinister plots

If you felt how my stomach
refuses to eat
or heard my mind screaming
to race into the street

If you held my confusion
in the palm of your hand
you’d crumble to pieces
and ask how I stand

If you learned of the stats
in regard to my mind
you’d see that my ******
will likely be mine

So when you ask how I’m doing
And I say that I’m fine,
know I’m vaulting the bar
simply being alive

I should eat
a cake to celebrate my victories
over inherited Goliaths.
Instead my face is gaunt,
stoneless and lacking heroism,
while my mind starves for nutrients

I should eat.
Because this was my dream,
a house no one can enter
filled with unshared favorites.
I stare into the stove
yearning to climb in and sleep

I should eat.
To stop the searing in my chest
the quaking of my hands
the static in my ears
as I stare into the stove
yearning to climb in and sleep.

I should eat.
How long have I been here?
Shoulder bruised on linoleum,
cooling as I lie here
staring into the stove
yearning to climb in and sleep

You’re going to eat me someday, aren’t you?
You’re hovering when I wash my face
lingering behind the fridge door
crouching when my back is turned,
feeding my clothes to the dryer
You clash my thoughts against each other
until I barely know I’m awake

You’ll sink your teeth into my hip
while I sprint up the stairs.
You’ll snap my arm off
as I fumble with my keys
crush my ankle
as I leap for a drain pipe,
shatter my skull
while I’m clawing a riverbank

Everywhere I go
you’ll be there.
Every time I rest
you will take a bite.

You’re going to eat me someday, aren’t you?
and no one will be surprised

Tell me how we are to defeat
a ravenous constant maelstrom
when our only weapons
are prescribed
by a fighter who sees battle
but 45 minutes at at time

What good is armor
with no memory of war?
What can I do with a sword
sharpened only once a month?
Why do I take orders from you,
the most incompetent leader?

My fists are clenched but will not fly
because of the power you have over me
You could mislead me and I would die
but somehow I’m the liability

You’re in the deepening blackness
that chases the sunset to my window
and the dread creeping beneath my skin.
The Old Fear fizzes in my ears
with hypnotic need to leap from up high

The quiet is steeped in evil
that plays the creaking doorway
and the footsteps to my bed
on loop in this sleepless unease
through a megaphone long broken

The bright icy claw of something
invisible catches up to me,
freezing my eyes and halting my chest.
I’m a prison – a waking corpse
and you don’t even know you’re here