Desert; or Asylum?

Paranoia grows exponentially
With each trigger
Pull the trigger and watch me bend backwards
Bend and bend until I break my back
And then I’m left staring
At a conspiracy of stars
And too petrified to move
Into my room
Nobody comes when I scream
I can only watch their dreadful dance
As they see through my every thought
And whisper among themselves
I can pray
But I must not be doing it right
If God can’t set this right
I can take my medicines
Dig my head into the ground
And go to sleep
And dream of those spotlights
And no matter how bad the nightmares get
I’ll forget them after my morning coffee

Better not to let it out
If I can’t control it
If I can’t trust myself
If I can’t deny it’s all in my head
Unless I can rely on you
But who am I to you?

…
So I’ll trim my hedges
And mow my lawn
Get the roof in order
And clean the windows
…
Open for business
…
Because closing down
Either means
The desert of the soul
And metamorphosis
Or the asylum
And stagnant hell

Hibernation; Or Death?

I’ve been sleeping for 1400 days
Mostly
And before that
A mad blaze
Roasted me
Lift,  jog,  play
Transcendental meditation
Sword dances * or kukri in this case*
Blood sacrifice
(More like self mutilation *my keloids bear witness*
Because the pain made me feel so alive
The adrenaline! I needed war paint…)
Goa rave party
1200 micrograms
Of Infected Mushroom
(I drank a bottle of vodka
Instead of acid,
Or snorting white lines,
It still did the trick
Or maybe it was all the lights
And the bass
And people wearing shiny LED glasses)

Visions Of gods and goddesses
Demons and rakshasic energies
Indra, Kaveri, Rahu, Shiva
Apollo, Ereshkigal, Inanna
A global delusion
Across space and time
Gave me the energy
I was a frickin avatar *sometimes a brahma rishi*
Deadlifts
Testosterone
And a bloody steak
Every Sunday
RAWR!
Moving my body
In a mad frenzy
To the beats of
‘Burn your village to the ground’
Prodded ever further into madness
By cruel neighbours
Extremes of anger and joy
Were a normal part of my day
I was so driven… but also… a lunatic…

Then Reality opened my eyes
My energy died
And now I’m still asleep

But the Depths
are shaking me awake
What will this new dawn bring?
Finally something real?

I have learned my lesson…

A Man Without a Plan

A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder
-Thomas Carlyle

I was once a man with a plan
I had it all charted out in my head
I should be dead!
I should be dead…

Never planned on living past thirty
Seemed a ripe enough age when I was fifteen
I hated the machine!
I hated the machine…

Never planned to smoke
But curiosity killed the cat
I was such a brat!
I was such a brat…

My plans never ever get fulfilled
Always end in failure
Looked good on paper!
Looked good on paper…

So now I’m okay with winging it
Drifting aimlessly in the sea
Living life ex tempore
Outside ‘reality’
I’ve already quit a twenty year old vice
Didn’t plan on it
It just sort of happened one day

I still have ambitions
A man needs that to live in society
I just don’t plan on fulfilling them
I’m okay with mediocrity

The desert in my soul
Is filled with hidden life
One can’t plan a meeting

[Day 2 : quitting alcohol was easy peasy lemon squeezy

Day 41: I still feel the urge when I watch other people smoke]

Five Weeks Not Sober

I really need to stop drinking
I started this just to stop smoking
And now I’m five weeks tobacco free
But it has made me all boozy
I am feeling sleepy all the time
The Lady has gone without rhyme
or reason,  my tonic gin and whiskey
habit seems to be getting risky
I feel too weird to do anything
Don’t mind sitting, staring at nothing
Or lying down and watching the fan
Spin spin spin, a man without a plan

[W3 Prompt #39] Riddle Me This

I devour myself to stay alive
So that the children of day may thrive
My house is made of my substance
I was born just to give out assistance
I was so tall when I was young
Fire spread from my tongue
The glow of life slowly dwindled away
And my body turned grey
I am now deformed
Short and forlorn

What am I
Now?
Soon I will be nothing
But a memory
Of light
Easily forgotten

What am I
At this time
With death
A single night away?

What am I
When I have nothing left?

What am I?

…

…

…

…

…

[Answer: A candle undergoing an existential crisis]

For The Skeptic’s Kaddish

 Brandon’s prompt guidelines

Riddle me this… I would like to you to compose a riddle or “puzzle” poem. J.R.R. Tolkien included several in his novels, as did Lewis Carroll. Emily Dickinson wrote several riddles in poetic form as well. Here is a link defining “riddle”: https://poets.org/glossary/riddle

Here are some famous examples

There are no restrictions on length or rhyme. You can give the answer at the end of your poem, or to make it a little more fun, allow readers to try to guess the answer. You can also provide the answer within your poem. Have fun!

Delusion, Fantasy, Magic

The little maiden always talked
About Walpurgisnacht with delight
She used to give her aunt a fright
Her mom didn’t care,  her lungs filled with chalk
Eyes glazed while her soul drifted away
Far away from her daughter’s  wicca way

She called her little blue eyed porcelain doll
The Mother
And the matryoshka with its big dark eyes
The Crone
She was of course
The Maiden

Together they ruled the three realms
And shone their light on the world
Her aunt thought she was just dancing under elms
When she was really commuting to the netherworld

“I am a goddess, you see”
She told people happily
She never made any friends
But didn’t care about this trend

And then she turned sixteen
Her aunt had had enough
And felt the need to intervene
She threw away the dolls…things got rough

The Maiden then behaved
Like every other girl
But deep inside she craved
To dance in moonlight, to swirl
With the Mother and the Crone again
She made friends,  but felt so alone again

The voices came when she turned eighteen
And vivid dreams like movies on a screen
What happened next? I do not know
Something beautiful or terrifying?
I caught a glimpse of her by a willow
Dancing, crying, laughing, scrying

And in her shadow,  two dolls flying…
Her life’s story came to me with that one sight
Of her twirling under the moonlight

[I have not written for a while because I do not think my poems are turning out okay. This poem is not an endorsement for delving into the occult. Please don’t mess around with that stuff.]

Colours

I tried
Singing it
I tried
Triggering it
Aargh!
You name it
The Lady of the Depths is away
I’m just winging it *today*
Just another day
Of ramen
Another evening
Of whiskey and gin
Another night
Xboxing me in
My inspiration is all dry
My mind is too preoccupied
Where are the wights?
Where is the chaos?

I see  white knights
With their burning crosses
KKK, go away!

They just won’t go
Today,  tomorrow or every day
Chivalry is dead
Racism is transcendent
We always find something
In the other to hate
It’s a heavy weight
Thinking of this stuff

‘Nuff said’
Stan Lee said

Peter Parker’s head
Was filled with spider webs
Spinning, swinging, sinning
Vigilante justice
But he can’t do shit
Against a whole culture
Caesar Augustus
Would have none of this
Unless it was his daughter
Playing spider girl
Stan Lee
Ain’t no Caesar

My mind’s in a whirl
Colourful whorls
Colourful world
Melanin
A slight adjustment
To the sunlight
Bringing so much human plight

Our last stint
Of human slavery
Started with the Portuguese
The Turks and Arabs did it before
Don’t forget those Romans… Egyptians… Whateverians
Human lives equated to gold coins
Simple greed started it all… and then pigment

And then…

There’s that complex social strata
Discrimination turned into a science
The caste syste in India
Brahmin, Shudra, Kshatriya and Vaishya
These are the Varnas
The different colours of society
Then there are the avarnas
Without colour
The excluded
The untouchables

…

Are we really living in the 21st century?

Sometimes I think we’re moving in reverse

…

A Morbid Exchange of Comments

There was a guy on RoyalRoad
Prepared for battle,  in blue woad
His comments were filled with blood and gore
I played along in this comment war
We communicated in verse alone
Singing tunes that would chill you to your bone
I now render a pale imitation
Of our morbid conversation

The night was dark and filled with screams
He was cutting himself in his dreams
And hanging from the old wooden beams
A dark reality lit by moonbeams

She licked the blood from her lips
Swaying her seductive hips
Her eyes like the apocalypse
Lit up during the lunar eclipse

Red from the heat of the seventh hell
He woke up after he bid her farewell
Just in time to hear the funeral bell
Tolling for the pretty neighbourhood belle

There’s Something Beating in my Chest

While creating art
I threw up my beating heart
Sans blood and gore
While they watched the birds soar
It was all very dignified
If my pride was any guide
But they didn’t see
What happened to me
My deadly protest
Manifested
Nothing

And so I drifted away
Far away
To the banks of the river Lethe
Where I happened to meet
A three headed dog
Dreaming of meat
A nice big, fat, juicy tenderloin
I wished I could join
That mutt x3
In his/her/ their/its fond memories
Of medium well done
I needed more protein
I didn’t much care for greens
A quarter plate of beans
Was a quarter too much
In my opinion
But I longed for balance
So I ate it anyway

Anyway…
Cerberus was sleeping
And I was thinking
That I didn’t want to be there
But without my heart
Without that integral part
I was doomed to live in Hades
Forever
Sadly ever after
Unless…
Yes!

I dived into the river
And swam and swam and swam
I needed to get back and jam
In the world of the living
I’d just met a cool bass guitarist
But without my heart… mist
Blinded me,  and when I could see
I found myself in the land of Dream
Standing before Dorothy

Judy Garland in technicolor
Made everything around her seem duller
She smiled at me and nodded
And the scarecrow applauded
Da Dum da Dum da Dum
I fell flat on my bum
And gasped in free verse
I could feel the pulse
Of the Universe
A pulsar exploded in morse code
To the beat
Of something in my chest

The Magic Garden

Did she bring me salvation, or merely a break from my routine of escapist fantasies and Marlboro Reds? My future lay in the integrity of my bed. I wanted to sleep, but her mystery intrigued me. I beat down my demons. They would rise from the dead after a while. I raised my glass to the mysterious Lady who had appeared before me.

Salut!

I drank her cure and breathed in her incense. Tchaikovsky’s canons fired in my head. The liquid in the vial tasted vile, of mint, lint and a wicked smile. I didn’t mind the freshness , but the dregs in my mouth choked me, and made breathing a Herculean task. I was no demigod. As my vision faded, I saw the world smirk at me. This twisted reality, that filled me with such pain, always had a smile on its face.

When I woke up, I found myself in a garden with bonsai trees, and honey bees busy with their work of pollinating flowers. A chill filled my body and stopped me from thinking clearly. Warm sunlight tried its best to comfort me, but to no avail. After I grew used to the cold, I wondered if I was dead. A natural death was what I had longed for, but the refrain of pain within me cried out, telling me that I was still alive. I looked into a pool at the centre of the Garden, and gazed at my reflection. Something was off. My reflection blinked, and then grinned.

[I will write some poetry now, and continue this auto fiction project later.]