A disturbing tale of trying to get it done right the first time...

Trust abandoned him
On the doorstep of despair.
He was taken in by a bruised thought,
Slept with countless worries,
Wrapped tight in a thin grey blanket of fear.

The mask he was forced to wear
Emulated a reptilian skin,
Provided a calloused layer of stoicism.
It hid his fragile features well,
Tucked them neatly behind
A crayon-colored cartoon grin.

This innocuous expression,
In due course, of course, was shed,
Cast off
In an incandescent adolescence.
Replaced by a volatile anger
Flash-fire resentment,
His features taking on a sharper edge,
(The square jaw,
The linear look in his heavy-lidded eyes!)

His heart and hands, however,
Still bound by indecision,
Feet held fast to flames
A victim of that
Nasty teen-age hormone-raging,
Awkward frustration
Some call it the blues, blues,
Blues, blues, blues, blues, blues
In fact, he often looked
As if he were about to explode!

Misery loved his company.
A canine tooth to his foster father’s voice,
His run and fetch a stick trick
Eventually burying the bone,
Stifling any in-bred motivation.
Purging himself of his long-nurtured belief that
All good dogs
Go to heaven.

Later, taking up a hammer in trade
He was able to embrace a measure of perfection.
Squaring off against the world,
Throwing up the skeletal walls,
Of unattainable expectation.

Reality, incessantly chipped away
The poorly-constructed images in his head;
Belligerently he insisted that
Someday, someone would catch a glimpse of his
Undying loyalty, obvious intelligence,
And a never-ending need to love and be loved.
A pat on the back would have sufficed…
Or the occasional hug.

But non-conformity marked his path,
Led him around like a mischievous mascot.
The vestiges of his
Born a victim, be a victim fate
Leading him astray,
Dragging him like a broken chain,
Further and further away
From the land of the real,
The home of the saved.

Until…

“I am not a snake”, He cries!
“I am not a dog,
Not a bag to be punched.
Not trash to be discarded,
I am no less than the rest of humanity!
I did not ask for this f’ed up life!”

Yet even this externalized verbal assertion
Manifested itself in a badly frayed hope,
A rope too thin to climb,
His true point-of-view more readily revealed
In two tear-swollen, bloodshot eyes.

And Sleep,
Yeah, sleep,
That faithful life-long companion,
Even she chose to come undone,
Abandoning him,
Fleeing his side.

Now the tiger pacing,
Pacing.
Ever awake through those
Endless hours of night.

He holds his weary head and sighs,
Her absence weighing heavily
Upon his dreamless mind.
Forced to face those inner-fears alone,
To curse his loss and hope the passage home
To be safe…
Safe,
A thousand angels circling
In a great nocturnal presence!
Safe,
Safe,
He could almost see them,
Somewhere up above,
Almost hear them.

Dejected and alone he must acquiesce,
Abandoning a lifetime of broken promises,
Unachieved goals,
And the thought of one too many
Unhappy endings.

A dreamonic mantra,
Now fills his inner-ear,
Implants a cancer in his brain,
Grows more deadly with each passing night.
His body weakens.
His spirit flickers,
Becomes another burnt out light
Behind a torn and battered shade.

What it is, is what it is, is
When life has played you wrong.
You can not change the way you are
And you are… very much alone!

What it was, was what it was, was
When life has played you wrong.
You can not change the way you are
And you are … very much alone!

What it is, is
What it was, was
And what will be, yeah, it will be!
I’d like to say, I’ll end up rich
But it ain’t happened yet,
To me!

The ether hisses this
And other insidious melodies.
Crickets roar with laughter!
The night and day become as one
And the stars,
The stars
Whisper to a deep-rooted self-loathing,
Maliciously stroking
His insomnia-fed delirium.

And there in isolation’s arms,
Behind thick curtains drawn,
He seeks an end to the constant beat
Of this
Mind-numbing tym-panic drum.
A future, that of madness.
A life, socially dysfunctional,
Politically disposable,
To his disdain,
He knows that he will always be
The pauper and the pawn.

Trapped in this awareness,
Facing another disengaging dawn,
He climbs into a bathtub,
Places clean towels around his head.
The trigger pulled,
The hand grown limp
The pain completely gone.

Quite fatal, this self-inflected wound.
Quite final,
He wouldn’t get this wrong!
He took his time and did it right,
The deed,
So neatly done.



Michael S. True
11-18-07 last edit 8-21-13

Michael S. True
11-18-07 last edit 8-21-13