Cease your perpetually rushed tendencies,
and listen to a boy who believes himself to be wise.
Calm the churning of your thoughts,
open your eyes and broaden your horizons.
Feel the steady beat of your heart.
Slow your breathing, and ready yourself.
I speak in metaphors and analogies,
in an oftentimes futile attempt to understand life.
I spend my days writing, singing, hoping and dreaming.
Sometimes, it is an incoherent and nonsensical mess.
Other times, I find myself caught in an epiphany.
In those moments, I take one step closer,
closer to an answer, to that one question all ask themselves:
What is my purpose for being here?
In the short span of years that I have been alive,
I have experienced a diverse multitude of things.
Some of them possessed of a ravishing beauty.
The soft caress of a lover, her sweet words whispered in my ear.
Or the involvement in something greater, better than myself.
Others have had abhorrent and malevolent qualities.
The loss of oneself to the avaricious fingers of addiction.
Or the helplessness of holding a loved one as they leave this world.
At times I have found myself fighting for my very life.
At others I have found myself willing to leave it behind.
I incessantly find my heart vying with my mind for *******.
I have foolishly stood by and watched with apathetic eyes,
my slow and agonizing departure from sanity.
Even consumed by insanity there is truth to be gleaned.
If only one finds in themselves the exit from its’ purgatorial cell.
Life is not preordained, it is not predictable, or even reasonable.
Life simply exists in its’ entirety with multitudinous choices.
The body is the vassal for life, and thus, you have a choice.
Life is what you make it; you can choose to make it good.
Or, whether through naivety or foolhardy bravado,
you can choose to make it irrevocably bad.
This is not to say you will always choose what is right.
But rather that you alone have the power to define yourself.
I am no longer a child, nor do I profess myself to be aged.
But I can say with undeniable certainty, that my mind,
being enigmatic as it is, has surpassed my physical age.
If only now I might find the remedy to purge my heart,
for it pumps the poison of love into me everyday.
But even being as caustic and acidic as love may be,
to rid yourself of it would be to squander your life.
Harness love and you wield a double-edged sword.
It can cut you down just as easily as another.
I have released my heart to do as it will.
In someone else’s hands it now lies insecurely.
But with a stubborn valor it remains there despite my calls.
With askance acquiescence I call no longer.
I wait with a stoic trepidation overshadowing all hope.
But even cast in shadow as it is, hope has its own light
So now I find myself waiting, forever if I must.
The answers I so desperately yearn for are just on the horizon.
If only I could reach out, with feeble, trembling hands,
and sieze them before they escape my grasp again.
Perhaps then I will reminisce upon the past,
therein finding the reaason behind every occurence of importance.
I've never been the most hardy of people.
But despite all of the walls obscurring my path,
I have somehow endured, and so I shall continue to do.

My memories are few and far between -
a strange symptom of a strange sickenss -
a brain worm: one that chews.
One that leaves spaces, pauses,
where previously there were none.
A parasite, an affliction that eats, that consumes.
My memories are few and far between,
they keep me up at night. Loud and unruly.
Misplaced. Incomplete. Lacking.
They are a large crowd, gaining, invading,
growing, incoming, moving ever closer,
attacking. Pitchforks made of wood
and something I don't recognise.
A vague feeling of unease,
a displaced feeling, uncomfortable and unreal.
A reminder of all I am not. Of all I have not.

My memories are many and chronic,
a forever affliction, unending and all-consuming.
Mistakes I've made; feelings I've ignored.
Things I've lost: sisters and lovers.
Things I've found, fading out, fading in.  
It is a sort of death, in that regard:
I was a child and now I am not.
An age, a past, laid out beneath you,
stuffed in a box,
suffocated under six feet of dirt,
a tombstone rammed between its eyes.
One memory or two, a lifetime,
sinking into the mud.
An earth worm: one that chews.
Your body belongs to you,
and your body belongs to someone else.
A boy. An ancient thing.
You and the other you.
You and all you could be.
You and all you are not.

I am a man lacking in memories,
there are gaps in my life I cannot fill,
places and people, fuzzy, faded.
Real and not real, mixing together, obscurring,
distorting, corrupting.
False memories: tales of my youth
told only by drunk aunties and dead grandmas.
Fantasies created by others,
a lacking and a need to fill it.
Tales of my youth locked away, burnt into
diaries and journals,
hidden away or destroyed entirely,
told, scrawled and scratched
into the walls, into the mind.
A frightened mind. A disease,
an affliction. Delusions and hallucinations,
paranoia. Fantasies created by me.  

And I am a man drowning in them,
good and bad. Real and not.
We are patchwork quilts
of all we were and all we are
and all we will be.
We are sewn together and torn apart.
Our stitches just scars, our colours faded,
unskilled attempts at beauty, at life.
Worn down and dusty,
seams failing, patterns ugly.
Used and loved
and then unused and unloved.
A circle. A roundabout.
New and old. Good and bad.
Used and unused.  
But you are not your body.
Your temple prays to no-one.
You're a work of art,
and you're canvas
of just shape and colour.
You're a patchwork quilt
and your scars are just stiches.  

You have no memories,
a blank slate,
dead and now reborn,
a child and then not.
A body that is not you, that could never
be you, a mind -
a collection of memories, dreams, realities,
people, places, sisters, lovers -
without meaning,
a mind that has nothing.
A blank slate.
A momentary madness.
A mind that is not you,
and a mind that could be nothing but.

And yet you have so many,
written into your skin,
carved, engraved.
Trapped, running and jumping
through your veins.
Unstoppable. Unbeatable.
Real or not, it's all the same,
ask yourself:
which is the greater sin,
to have too many memories
or too few?
Which holds you by the throat
and which goes straight for the lungs?
The excess and the absence.
It's all-consuming; it's suffocating.
A brain worm; six feet of dirt.

You are a man lacking in memories,
and you are a man drowning in them.