pain

PERMISSION TO RISE

Am I brave enough yet to emerge
to escape the regret
to dismantle
forget
to demolish the surge of this
plundering ache
to curb and to conquer
and famish the quaking
– this suffering silence –
this violent breath taking

Am I whole enough yet
to prohibit the shaking
snaking my flesh with
its mandible gaping –
and I
an invertebrate
sensing
it
raking
its
claws
like it’s tilling a field in my pause.

– I AM –

I am soul enough, rousing to roar
but will this awareness
alone be the door to implore me to forfeit
renounce and withdraw from
this former attachment
to lapse while I stall
while in fragments
I catch myself falling
before
I submit to this whiplash of
“worth less” and war

mauling through self–harm
rejecting my core

Perhaps in my rapture my courage will capture
the thrill of detaching
unlatching
resolving
forgiving myself for my lack of evolving
for dressing tornadoes I’d wade in
– dissolving –
while anchored by nought but
the grief I was holding
by swallowing pain
– almost framing each frame –
as the slower the memories
the faster they came and the longer they’d last
it would tighten their hold
and the closer they’d weave they would blindfold
and frighten
and once I was frozen and broken
– eyes widened –
they’d leave

Perhaps fate will gift me a shift
from my history to bask in my victory
and mask my past injuries
and race to new mysteries
and questions, unanswered
and answers, un–asked
but desperately fancied
as I take on this task to have finally been caste
to have grown from my hate
to have flown past a place
where my purpose was faceless
to race to a moment I have hungered to taste
in a time I had dreamt of
instead of erased –

to a piece of the peace I deserve
and a truth to embrace

Will the aching forsake me at last
and the healing re–take me
its journey as vast
as the path it will trace to re–shape me
I ask
and will it profess to regress to
a time I could heave less
bereaved less
and
survive long enough to emerge
at my boldest and best?

The answer is ‘yes’

US LIKE CANDY (HAIKU)

Something greater (pain)
– dangerous to both our hearts –
eats us like candy

TIME, AGAIN (HAIKU)

Time, again, bleeds through:
my skin, the landmark of pain
Weeping wounds, naked

SOLDIER

The Man who never brought hell home
was wise beyond his years.
He suffered long
but lived it loud
imprisoned by his fears –
and those were thus:
that those before him
came and went
with nothing left but
pain and name
and more of same
who went and came
from seed in soil
to root and stem,
to fallen branches, time again:
a family tree to fuel the flames
on cold and lonely nights.

Embodied by the coat of arms he wore,
this Last to hold his name,
he swore,
– in vain, perhaps –
to stand at ease no more.

The Man who never brought hell home
encased himself in spite and spirits:
ghosts of generations gone,
encroaching deep within.
He sought for answers,
fought for reasons,
questioned why his bloodline grew
to fall and rise
and curse and kill
with secret lies
and stolen rights
and ties he could not sight.

The Man who never brought hell home
had died
the moment he arrived
– or so he thought –
he always said,
with eyes in search of something else . . .
perhaps that love that once he’d felt,
despite the years of crime he lead.
And what is left, again, but holes
to fill with buried woes and
broken war-like games and
shattered dreams
and darker still yet, nothing.
Nothing, as it always seems.

Not a sliver shall him by, it pass,
of hope,
of love,
of peace –
not until the very last,
this Man who never brought hell home.

And so, this Man, with blind belief
declared his story would be brief,
atoning for the sins he cast
in other’s lives
in years that passed,
and spent his days in self destruction,
free from want, control, and need,
biding time with bated breath
like men, before, who longed for death,
entrained in mind and soul,
until one day,
the hell that never came,
came whole.

For every man,
and son of man that once there was,
who sharpened knives
and counted tools
and cleaned his guns,
and polished pride, his moral compass
by his side,
who now lives to wake and wakes to die,
repelling faith, repelling truth, and
cussing lies –
this Man has died.

SPAKE

Impale, oh thee, thine words
with burning, slow incisions,
once, and again,
unto death’s
arrival.

THOUGHT #301

To learn from a bruised soul, one’s heart must remain uncushioned.

ABREACTION

carnal lightening reaped my brain with verve
and sickled fever, emotion sloughing clean
my tortured psyche

and who was I to challenge
this narcotic self-ablution –
yet, what of my resolve to linger
undisturbed
in bias mental disarray?

pathetic hypotheticals
engorged my blood
like nothing new
the tension burning scars within this
manic carcass grew

until

my hybrid-self assaulted what was once
un-failed but often wrong integrity
and swifter than a scarlet blade
my conscience was absconded
to a heaven: peace, release, and ease

had I commanded armies to retreat?
my palsied mind
was finally worth its bloodied ground
and tissues thick with matters
fed on independence
lost amongst the strain

I must remember where I left my genius