There’s no substitute for life.

I find myself,
seduced by yearnings.

I’m flourishing here,
contemplating sin.

I’ve nothing to do
when I’ve nothing but time.

I’m reusing solitudes -
they’ve become ragged.

What’s the answer then?
Should I seal my girly heart,
engage in uncaring kisses
like it’s ‘casual friday’ -
connive brief excitements
- just to feel a pulse?

It keeps me up at night,
The future,
Such a beautiful place of impossibilities,
A place that holds the laughter of my son,
The tears over my just-passed wife,
And my grandchild's love of books.

i see myself -
unshaven and distraught, at peace with who i am and despaired by a world i saw coming but couldn't prepare for.
i see myself -
sitting in the old house, civil war ghosts whispering through the cracks in the dry red clay. sherman burned this town once and now i get to watch the sun do it again.
i see myself -
the hedges are overgrown and i never stopped smoking cigarettes. the shadows on the walls are mapped out, a mimicry of life in an empty heirloom.
i see myself -
head in my hands thinking about history. The Last Gilded Age. The Second Gilded Age. what good are comparisons if no one's left to draw them? how does the past make room in a world already strangled by its present?
i choke back -
the same addiction that made geraldine shoot herself. it occurs to me that i am probably the last person alive to remember geraldine ever existed. i think that's what drew me to history - i've always had the past living inside me. there's a whole family tree intertwined with my ribcage, like kudzu over tarred lungs.
i fill my -
flask with weedkiller. i inherit an open wound. i try to find my place in a history that no one will ever read.

●●●
the mind of a person
overwhelmed by Self-deception
does not try to know reason
to think or believe in
advice and criticism given
by someone
contrary to his speculation
he always examine
as it was an insult to his disposition
he continuously remain
in the grip of apprehension
hostility and aggression.
●●●
©deovrat 26.09.2020

When I was a youth
I was ambitious
to be recognised
as a know-it-all,
and so I often spoke
beyond my experience,
speculating when I did not have experiential-evidence;

Now that I’m wiser,
I never speak beyond the evidence
of my experience.

Time to come home—
Before you never know
What happened to anything.

Speculation and Introspection
     Predatory Skills Possess
               You Are The Prey