I’m stuck
in a house in the woods
and the murderer circling outside
is friendlier than the few
survivors trapped in here
with me

I write, now, only of
exhaustion and anger

no more is there love
or adventure or
hunger
or thirst
or solutions
or questions
or even suffering

there is only
burn-out
and
further burn-out

I need much more than
a good soaking
this time

if knowing everything
is key

having nothing left to learn
is the fastest way to
enlightenment

the warmth is spreading
through me
and tomorrow I can
wake up
late

there are little things
I want to do
but
time gets in the way
and space gets in the
way and all the way to Armageddon
things oppose us and there’s nothing
we can do to beat them
sometimes

so we go to sleep all night
and the rain makes good dreams
until we wake up in the morning
and begin that march to the end
all over again

so long with sickness
can make a man sick

permanently sick,
sick more with sickness
than the disease itself,
a poison that lives in your blood,
in your veins, which engrains deeper
with each beat of your heart,
each thought in your mind
becomes toxic, sick,
but you become used to it;
so much in pain
you hardly notice it any more
constantly on the edge of a breakdown
fearful of everything, fearful of yourself,
and that, that is the illness
I’ve been living with
for so long now,
I hardly knew what it was like
to live without it

my limbs are light
my mind jittery with the lifted
weight

what now? I wonder

everything,
I suppose.

I have fallen silent
after speaking for so long
and finding the world
only staring back in confusion
and condemnation

back to square one.
back to nothing.
back to no friends
and no one who cares.
back to having no one
to please.
back to having no purpose.
back to being pointless.
back to self-hatred and
anger at the world.
back to quiet music.
back to silence.
back to wanting but
never getting.
back to living alone
with my thoughts for
eternity.
back to the worst sort
of life.
back to all this.

back to the way things
must be, I suppose.