This is all there is now.
I guess I played too long,
The Good Man and The Fool.
Dawn is rising in the East
and the light of the Sun
is setting fire
to all my could-have-beens,
my never-weres
and my isms.
I wanted to be great;
and I tried,
and I failed,
and I tried again.
How I didn’t go out
in some kind
of beautiful deal spiral;
I’ll never know,
but the things
that stayed with me
daily,
was the words,
the pen,
the paper,
the blood
and The Screed.
Pouring out of me,
and endless fountain of shit.
High mind
brought low,
smashed down,
tapped a sewer pipe
and somewhere,
deep under the skin,
a severed ventricle
pumps maddening volumes;
daily.
I can’t shut it off.
It’s never ending.
I pick up the pen
and it’s like opening a tap.
A gate valve,
holding back
a tidal wave
of endless horrors.
Every morning,
I pour up a glass of it,
I shower in it;
I cleanse my mind,
my eyes,
and fuel my soul with it.
The letters form words,
the ones you’re reading now.
This is all I have
that makes me me.
My Sistine Chapel,
my Mona Lisa,
my intricate deception.
Undone by the prying eye.
Don’t worry about me;
I’ll keep going.
Every day,
when I wake up,
The Screed is waiting for me.
Daring me,
to pick up the pen again.
HG – 2018
