silken pages from my obituary

I deny myself that which cannot sustain them any longer. What was once necessary to them but is now no longer required. That which they have become for various lesser creatures of this earth. The ones that now ingest the nothing made of their something, which was my everything.

I watch all the others and I think to myself. Normally I'm not as good as you are, but in this moment, I am better. And I sit there comforted by this fact, and scribbling these mostly useless poems. Sometimes the skeletal formations of verse. Sometimes the embellishments of prose.

The book into which these are written is green, spiral bound, and too tightly so, it should be noted. It is marked up on the front, tiny indentations from the lack of care exhibited by all the rabid Wal-Mart customers scrounging around the bin to find some other, somehow one step superior book, one of the blues or the pinks or even the browns. I rescued this one via capitalist consumerism, and it now serves my purposes.

There is a book of the Bible called Lamentations. I am not so much a prophet as a connoissieur of these, and this, I suppose, is mine. It contains lines on many subjects, many (if not all) of which do not exist anymore. Most are for a dead girl who is no relation of mine, whether through blood or correspondance or general exposure. And my while my sorrow for her is suffocating, while it is excruciating at times, while I feel it like a thousand pounds of lead piled high on my chest, it is undeserved, unwanted, inappropriate.

Some concern a woman I knew little better, the mother of my probable brother, who put a bullet in her head and is content that it remains there fifteen years later. Her life was imperfect, comprised of an abusive father, absent mother, a (later meth-addicted) sister for whom she was responsible at an entirely too young age, the indifferent cruelties of my father, the responsibility for my brother. Is it any wonder that the drive and the volition and the intent and the suffering were enough to lodge the steel into her brain enough to kill her. Was it not merciful.

And there is my son. This child I folded back into the earth. This child who, if there is a God, I hope is being blessed piece by piece back into the earth. Nameless. Lifeless. Dreamless. Endless. And then there is my son.

I am not a happy person. I am not a happy person.

I wish I could believe in God so strongly, with no doubts.

I wish I could so that I could pray for you, and that I would matter and He would listen.

I want to believe. I want to think that He still thinks of me softly. I want to believe in His mercy.

But your death severely frustrates all hope that there is a God.

I wish that the future were real, instead of just something that I spend all my time trying to prevent. I wish that the future could actually be something that I could plan and look forward to instead of just trying to figure out a way to stop it from happening.

You are blinded by disease. Gross flesh sinking downwards, skeletal fingers to brush your cheekbone. It distracts you from the great honour I afforded you, the fact that it is so much for you. You, who so much like my past, present, and future, never wanted me. You who shunned me from the moment I was born, though you were never aware. You who turn your face away from this corpse with so many more bones to bare.

When there is nothing left to live for, death is there waiting.

When there is nothing more to say, the silence is there.

When there is nothing left to fill the void, the void takes control once more.

Back and back and back. And so my world-weary spirit sinks below contentment's horizon, compensating on a grand scale for what beauty I prayed would be returned to me. The words flowing in what might bear a semblance to beauty, but still rendering me neither appealing nor worthy. Eloquence filling my veins as all the life drains from my heart.

I guess there's always necrophilia. Dead girls don't say no, after all.

What hatred you hold for me cannot surpass my own. What disgust you render within your mind's eye. Ignominy far outranking the outlandishness of my own error. In thinking you my equals. Beneath the docket and what flag comes furling down. What long-suffering matron you would tear down from her rightful place above us. Into your own worthlessness. What disgust I hold for you. False children of Americana.

It makes no musical sense for a traitor to sing a song of compatriots. To feel the warmth of Patria's light and to be comforted along with the true.

Even I, the wretched, even this demented and deformed model of femininity. Even I, who has endured, has endured, has endured. Even I, whose virtue dissipated in one instant along with what rendered me holy and somewhat worthy of such a life as you are privileged to lead. Even I, who am convinced that my life is all but finished, that all the goodness that can exist in life flees before me.

Even I have more faith than you do.

How is writing a means of reducing stress when it is just as painful to dredge up the words as it is to leave the thoughts unsaid? To let them rot until they seep out into the soil of my grave.

I would kill for half of the talent I see before myself now, paraded in a carnival of what-you-can-never-be, paper tigers and glimmering masks over every face and every not-a-face. Hands touched and slipped by in twilight, the fires of Rome are burning and we aren't ourselves now, are we. My conflagration matches those of Hell - surpasses! - but I might be a devil myself and so you expected it. Transposed into a higher key, more of a challenge to sing and keep time with the tick tick tick the orderly and maddening MADDENING madness of the completely sane metronome, my thoughts fly apart and who are you to ask this of me, that I might act rationally, as sensible as the simplified denominators of every inequality, act as predictably as any equation known to man? I cannot, I cannot.

It isn't anything you can pinpoint upon the endless rap sheet of human error. There is no Latin pseudonym for this indescribable state.

This is the human condition.

And you, all that you do, say, think, feel, all of it is met with endless adoration and approval, such mass love for that sweet little smile that can offend no one.

I want to bite that smile off your face. Tear it from your pretty lips, drink in your blood and drown. I'll be the one that kills you, the one that murders all that you are. I will tear you from your pedestal and watch the marble scatter over the ground, I will burn you with the fire I stole from Prometheus.

This is the human condition.

Is it so easy for you to abandon me. As some aspect of nature hurled out into our urban sprawl for us to pick up, survey, discard when you tire of this strange emissary from a strange world. Out of that same compulsion that drives us to step upon autumn's crunchiest leaves just to hear their demise, sharp beneath our feet. Such a satisfaction derived from the act.

When the car breaks down you get out and walk on. All the other cars whirring past. And you are forgotten amidst the endless procession of gas stations, roadside peddlers, setting sun at your back, moon rising silver and pale over the lonely road and lonelier you.

I could tell you exactly what I'm thinking, but I won't. We lack the why. You could tell me what you're thinking, but I know. There is the because. So what would it change? What possible difference. Something. Anything. Nothing. Everything. It's all a big uncertainty. But I said we lacked the why. We've only got the because. So unsatisfying. So. So get drunk again, marvel and ponder, let those truths out in a whisper that no one else hears. More fitting a fate than being entombed on a page, in the hearts and minds of humans. Such a vile creature in its purest form. Drunks see the world clearest. Drinkers and lovers. Sweetness is never so bitter as when it is out of reach. Those words you'll never say to me. The words that could make all the difference in the world.

I wander cold October streets in the dark, frail arms wrapped around my chest, as though afraid to lose myself. Tears well up in my eyes, rimmed with lies and sadness. My heart is cold and there is a bitter distrust that claws at my insides when I think of these people. I stare at shadows laughing in the dark and I hate it, how life goes on spinning while you are stuck. I half-sing the same 30 seconds of song over and over and cannot get over the words he spoke to me four years ago. ‘Such beauty’.

I spent so many hours in that courtyard, composing letters in my head. Letters to no one, letters to anyone, letters neither transcribed nor sent.

I thought of all the things I could say to you, to her, to him, to them, to me. All of you, the people who say you are but never try to be.

I resented the light above the trees, free of obligations and expectations. It told me there was something higher than me. I knew it could and would fall on my head. Sunlight falling down to evening, adding a day to the past that never really wanted me.

I watched the time pass before me in this manner. Society's congregations, moving before me. I watched identical years move in a procession in front of me, and I was unable to reach out and touch any part of this life. Because I don't belong to these years, these months, this day and age.

Through the seasons I sat, lunch ignored, staring. At what? I have just described, but more than this, I saw the future passing in succession. The future that has no place for me.

There is no reason for any of us to be living. Our death dates are predicted before we are even born, and are set. They cannot be changed. We all die. It doesn't matter how or when. It all ends. Another whisper to the bereaved. Final worded breath stops stirring, laying cold over a cheek.