It was during a summer of sweltering weather, on one of her biweekly foray’s for food and booze, that a bipolar alcoholic decided to create an unbridgeable disparity with all things and reinvent herself.
.
Not unlike the day
to unfold in such a way,
too hot,
too humid,
too much drama,
too much ignorance, and a
proud Wiccan’s ongoing struggle
to keep her mystical powers intact…
.
(Tues Morning)
After another
night of Jack slamming,
a bleary-eyed boozer decides
not to offer the routine ‘what ups’
to all those she thinks are friends….
Instead of smiling and nodding,
she’ll pretend she isn’t there,
POOF! Now she’s invisible,
in plain sight, viewing
life askew, an
outcast,
alone,
stubborn,
self-consumed,
refusing to take heed,
but still doggedly striving for
the respect she thought was due….
.
It was good (in theory)
being sequestered this way,
she thought, maybe, mainly from
those who saw through her onionskin
façade, and the sargasso disaster of odd
behavior that often pissed everyone off …
.
And given all
the anomalies of this
new punctilious personality,
and the kind of perpetual vigor
required to maintain it, she chose
to give herself one outlet…
If someone did turn
their sentiments towards her,
(to further grasp her odd doings) she
would accept only what reinforced her ego,
arguing [with herself] that this would
help keep her mystique intact,
.
but still…. by
the rigid rules that
governed vagueness,
she could never reach out
to anyone, or anything, save
her beloved booze, which was
the blankie she’d wrap herself in
to avoid all the murderous opinions of
sniffy douchebag people, whose doingses
were just (as she saw it) part of the
fallen nature of man…
.
And so…
.
time passed,
and the woman’s
awarenesses became
a dark farrago of feelings,
where silhouettes and
shadows drifted by,
where the
clicking of heels
echoed indistinctly,
where boulder voices
weighted her heart, and
dark dreaming deceived her,
where crafty schemers enticed
her with half-truths, and where
liars whispered false promises…
.
But despite knowing this,
she still chose to channel them,
and to embrace the tainted
power they offered,
eagerly, each day,
come what may,
another voice to feel and see,
taunting her deceptively, where
“fair is foul and foul is fair”,
so proud to be what
she’d become, in
all delusions that she’d spun…
.
What a pickle….
.
(Years later)
Down every aisle, human
masks nodded and smiled, and
all the many products beguiled,
Buy me
Try me
Eat me
Consider me…. but
pride suffered the tempting’s
of all things veridical and artificial,
choosing instead to stay wrapped in
an ever-pervasive sense of not belonging,
like an oppressive cloak, weighing on her life,
abandoned now by everyone, and everything,
a stubbornly unwilling woman, deluded and
removed, tripping alone again through
another sweltering day
painting her wet
with sweat…
.
© richard lloyd cederberg
7/2024
.
“Fair is foul and foul is fair” is a phrase spoken by three witches in the opening scene of ‘Macbeth’.
.
1st John 8-9
.
THE PORTRAYAL SERIES: Poetiprose insights (good and bad) concerning my immediate family and old friends (alive or dead). This series will also address certain of the actors, artists, musicians, and writers I worked with in college, or professionally, that were influential (in one way or another) in shaping the man I am today.
                A NEW RACE OF HuMANS