Out of Control

My mind feels so scattered like marbles being dropped and rushing in every direction.  It’s like I am internally going through every emotion possible, but at lightening fast speed.  Like watching a movie in fast forward, I am so confused about what’s actually going on.  I feel as though I’m actually going insane.  Is this how it really feels?  Like a multi-colored bouncy ball, my thoughts and emotions are colliding with my insides.  I feel so cold all the sudden and my senses have become heightened.  The dimly lit room has suddenly become so much more alive.  Why is it that just when I’m starting to feel a little better I’m abruptly pulled right back into this world of darkness.  Is this something I will always live with?  Will the shadow of doubt and fear continue to be with me every step of the way?  I feel as though my life has become so crazy it is like I’m behind the wheel of a car spinning out of control on ice; no matter what decision I make the car will still probably crash.  A grave and epitaph are already being selected for me.  The faint sounds of the trains that pass by my window remind me of freedom; freedom to move and freedom to live.  I am so trapped now that a bottle of alcohol or a rolled joint is where I would like to be right now.  As the prophet said, only I can unlock myself from this mental prison.  But the key is hidden in the dark and I have no light with which to find it.  I am scared that I may never find it and I will continue to be a lost soul forever.  Until my day of endless rest I shall search.  I pray you don’t have to share the same fate my friend because days of ceaseless anguish and suffering lay ahead of me.  This is the true fate of a lost soul.

Monitored

When shall this living nightmare come to an end?  My fears about being here are starting to come true.  Like a newborn child I am kept within visibility and earshot at all times.  The only time I am alone is at night and even then they are sleeping so close to me.  My every step and breathe throughout the day is recorded and analyzed.  I want to run away and be free again.  I am a caged bird that yearns to spread its wings and never return to this house of imprisonment.  I am dying slowly while I am here and I am losing time.  Soon I shall be a walking skeleton and nothing more.  I want to be able to feel love and happiness, but I can’t here.  Will I ever find such a person if I leave here?  So many people miss me and I share their feelings, but there is nothing I can do and I feel so hopeless because of it.  Why does it hurt so much to be happy?  Why does it hurt so much to try to love?  The only life I see right now is me, this pen, this paper, and a bottle of rum.  I have failed my parents, family, and friends.  I have failed everyone who ever had faith in me that I was a quality person.  Each and every day I have tried so hard to be the best I could be, but I have fallen so short of that now.  Who wants to love an alcoholic?  What potential does a pothead have?  I am the scum of the earth.  The faith that I kept so close to my heart for eighteen years has crumbled away like an eroded rock and has since been replaced by the closest thing to religion, Bob Marley.  I don’t know what to believe anymore or say or do.  What does this crazy world want from me?  What purpose am I suppose to serve?  I am losing the only sane part of my mind left.  I hope I can leave this place soon; I hope I find a way out.

Emptiness

I feel so empty now without alcohol and marijuana, like an empty piggy bank; if you dropped a quarter into me you could hear the clank as it the bottom and the incessant rattle until it finally came to rest.  I have jitters and twitches throughout the day as I fight the urge to use.  Walking through the grocery store today all I could see was the alcohol.  All I could see were the vast wine choices, beer, gin, rum and my good friend vodka.  I could not look away until I had scoped out each and every brand as well as each and every size bottle available for that brand.  Even on the drive home all I could see were liquors stores or alcohol advertisements.  I feel as though I am trapped by these thoughts of drinking and smoking.  Even when I am able to see a great friend and hang around with him, I still end up walking home sad.  What is to become of me?  Will I ever be happy?  I wish I had a crystal ball so I could see that down the road I’m fine and everything works out.  Right now I can only see as far as the present.  The future is so far away and out of touch.  The sad truth about my life right now is that I can’t even trust myself.  There is a force, greater than I, which has manifested itself in me ad is reeking havoc.  Like a parasite it multiplies and even finds ways to be reborn when an anecdote is found.  I am a carcass left in the desert to rot and be picked at by nomadic vultures.  Another day has gone and that means another day sober.  Another day survived and another day lived.  

VI

Sometimes I wish I could just run away and never come back.  Why do I even matter?  School means nothing.  All I do is get grades by someone else’s standards.  Life means nothing anymore.  I am always filled with rage and hatred.  At the slightest misstep I lash my venom in the direction of a helpless victim.  What did they do to really deserve that?  I want to be surround yet still feel alone, so why not just be alone?  If I could leave this place where could I go?  I am wandering aimlessly in the valley of darkness with nothing to help me.  Sanity is a word I often ponder.  I don’t think at any point in my life I have ever been sane.  Not once have I ever felt normal, not once have I ever felt like I’m ok.  Writing is the only thing I have and yet not even it satisfies me.  I am never good enough or worthy enough at anything.  I may act all high and mighty on my throne above the rest peering down among the lowly, but really I feel as though my talents lack any merit at all.  My true masterpiece has yet to form and in my desperate search for my potential greatness I have to toil in the calamitous efforts of my failings.  To dream is to know and not live, but to live is to know and wish it could have been dreamt.  The forces of good and evil take to the fields of war inside me.  With each turn in the battle I change myself.  The tides of war control me.  The master of the house has taken leave to hover over these bloody proceedings.  Oh what violence men make.  The spirit of my soul has been stolen by the gatekeeper, locked away never to be returned.  I live every day in a prison cell unable break through the iron bars.  Time has become so blurred that days feel like weeks and weeks feel like days.  I have been gone from the land of my fore fathers for some time now and yet I feel as though I may have never lived there.  Nothing is as it seems.  The light of day feels warm and honest, spreading happiness to those who bask in its unrelenting splendor.  Yet the monotony of darkness has been bearer of wisdom.  Maybe the light hides its faults with its flashiness and sparkling awe?  Maybe the darkness is the true source of wisdom for which I have been seeking on my quest?  Either way I must enter the rabbit hole to find the answers I seek and am I prepared to do this? I am not ready for this but I am going to go through it anyways.  When I get to the end I will let you know how far this hole really goes.

III

Master of my domain and keeper of darkness, I own the night.  I am pestilence and famine.  I am the watchman of eeriness.    I trudge through the valley of darkness searching for lost souls who have fallen off the beaten path.  These pitiful creatures are quite easy to round up.  Often isolated amongst the facade of norm; they are truly trapped even though they appear free.  Some are still afloat by means of lifelines, but even they are dragged down easily into the murky seas.  Captains of hope make efforts to go on rescue missions to save those who have started to sink below the waterline.  But those who have already gone under are considered too far gone to save.  Swill merchants, don’t they know that too far gone doesn’t mean just submersion.  Each layer breaks down a different part of what it is to be you.  I take things slow in order to make one suffer long drawn out pain; the kind that never really leaves even after reaching safety.  I am empowered by your relapses and take joy in haunting you when times seem good.  I tick like a time bomb awaiting my time to explode.  Your tears are the elixirs of my life.  Like cancerous tumors, I spread without warning and strike with deadly force.  To ignore me is to ignore oneself completely.  I am you; I become you; I consume you.  I am now your personality and your only friend.  Only one force can combat me.  The mind is a force to be watchful of.  He can be manipulated into an ally or turned into a foe.  He is a wavering force that has no bounds or limits.  To know him is to master oneself.  To ignore his power is either arrogance or foolishness on my part.  I know many ways in which to deceive him because of many years of practice, which has made me quite good at it.  Nothing but mastery of self can over come my grasp.  I travel swiftly and allow no safe havens.  I am what bumps in the night and what is waiting around every corner.  I am the darkness…I am fear

Opportunity and Fear

On the doorstep of opportunity I knock with uncertainty and doubt.  I have never been so certain in my life yet the fear, the fear of failure, continues to creep into my mind.  What if I'm not good enough?  What if I'm wrong?  The burden of fear has cast an overwhelming shadow upon me and my mind has once again been chained to the walls of insecurity. I want to reach the promised land and enjoy the purity of life.  Oh how I long to be loved as I love.  My life has finally inched in the right direction, but my troubled past continues to slow my progress.  My life is crumbling around me before my very eyes. Rome may not have been built in a day but it was destroyed in one.  My scruffy beard masks the scares of my childhood so nobody can see them.  Hope is so fickle that it isn't even worth trying to gain it anymore.  The only certainty in my life is uncertainty.  Anything that seems set in stone is really just etched in pencil.  Each day I struggle to cope with the ever-changing currents.  My livelihood hangs in the balance on the tip of a fine needle.  The stock market graphs don’t hold a candle to the violent undulating roller coaster I call life.  Who would have thought that I would end up like this?  Only the sweet voice of tenderness beckons me back to the light.  Her flowing locks brush against my tormented face and her eyes pierce my crushed spirit.  I am so vulnerable and yet I don’t seem to care.  Her smile lifts me up so that I may be closer to the sun rather than grovel along the ground for mere rays of light.  My poetic tongue is cut off by her mere presence leaving me with nothing to do by smile back at her.  Such a fair maiden as tenderness would make the likes of Aphrodite jealous.  While I may be a pauper the one thing I do have to offer is my heart.  I hope she accepts it or else I don’t know what to do.  I may just run away to some distant shore and live my days as isolated craftsman perfecting my art.  What shall life bring me next?  What more can be thrown at me?  Is it finally my time to be on the favorable side of this madness?  

Sea of Hope

The greatest crime against humanity is the invention of time.  Without it the world would be a simpler place and we could all live in peace.  But with it we are trapped into thinking that our lives revolve around time.  Life is not 9 am meetings and 3 pm conference calls.  Life is truly lived in moments when time has no bearing and we absorb our truest sense of being.  In those moments we are alive and for the rest of our existence we struggle to find another moment like it just so we can be reminded that we are actually alive rather than already having a foot in the grave.  Capitalism and industrialization have killed the human spirit.  At heart we are truly nomadic travelers who seek nature’s perfection.  While forests are being cut down so houses can built and while funding for parks declines seemingly every elections because policies on war and taxes take precedent.  What have we done with this world we live in?  The greedy hands of powerful men who want nothing more than to be re-elected taint anything beautiful or pure.  Everyday we waste away our last outposts of sanctity we are inching closer to losing our bearings of what it means to be.  To sit along the rocky coastline and watch the waves crash with such violent grace until the sun fades beyond the horizon is where I will always be.  To feel the sand between my toes and sink into the soft surface with each step as I turn my back from the sea and head farther up this oasis.  As night approaches all becomes quiet and the sounds of silence enter the fray.  The water rushing onto the sandy shore and the gentle breeze humming so sweetly in my ear make up a chorus of tangible tranquility.  Lying down in the sand and looking up at the numerous lights dashed across sky I become completely lost amongst the endless frontier of dark and light with the luminous moon being my only point of reference.  As the stiff sea breeze flutters the salty air through my nose I become alive.  It is as though I have inhaled the elixir of life.  A moment like this is what keeps the spirit hopeful.  It has been some time since I have lived and I yearn to do so while I have youthful ignorance on my side.  Treasure the life you find because soon there will be nowhere to find it.  Soon we may be doomed to the concrete jungle, which grows stronger each and every day.  It is never too late to start living, so be free and find yourself.  The longer we wait the closer we get to being another victim of society’s curse.  To dare to live is to dare to love, so rise young soldier and find thy truest sense.  Happiness is temporary, pain is everlasting, and love is essence.  The road is long and arduous but each step taken towards love is a step towards life.  We are what we love so if we love pain it shall define us.  But if we love goodness and harmony then we shall achieve nature’s perfection.