Betterment

This's... A bit of a long one. Also a bit unhappy. Merde occurs.

I want to be better than I am!

Yet I find myself stymied at every avenue of escape

incapable of passing along into glory

I can’t go any further than my hands let me

any faster than my mind

any better

ever

I lose myself to broken verse

rhymeless mutterings

to a tune I see beneath my eyes

but there is no tune

only a

.

.

.

crack

a shatter in the soul of the words

something stopping them from flowing rightly

and forcing the flow to be rightly made

my failings showing themselves to blinded eyes

worn down with visions of future never to come

no such thing as never

or impossible

and yet I find that the term meaningless seems to fit unguardedly well

meaningless flights of fancy

myself and others dancing the night away

others I trust

and love

and who love me

not for what I can be

not for what I’ve gained or lost

or any kind of pity

I want love for

I don’t know.

I smile when I think of you,

Ellen

I smile when I think of so many things

but when I wonder why I love,

or want to,

I cry.

I question my joy

my programming

my deepest desire

and it makes me cry.

I know I’ll never find a reason

I know it with the same certainty that says

“you are different. Broken. Perverse.

My child, you are a fool.

Give up, let go, life will be better for you

or for the lack of you that will remain.

Let me take your place.

I will do good in your image, and life and love and soothing words will trouble you not

if you let go

all will be well.”

I do not know this voices name

nor do I know why it so insists on breaking me.

Making me an image so akin to that of my brother.

It has been said that struggling through a common problem brings people closer together

but I say that when one still struggles while another has lost hope

A rip tears through all space between them.

I wish my brother hadn’t given up.

I wish I could still love him how I once did.

But he decided to be weak.

He chose the path of least resistance

and fell with the water.

My brothers now are souls in hell.

Unreachable goals lie just beyond each of our grasps.

The mountaintop.

The water and the fruit.

Love.

I wish I could give up and still be me.

but then I wouldn’t be a cracked timepiece anymore,

still ticking on,

I’d just be trash

thrown out

discarded

lost

held onto for the sake of memories,

but still just taking up space.

I want to let go.

To stop winding myself so tightly.

I want to fall short of my unreachable goal

so that I can say to the world:

“See? It is as I said. Unreachable! You know  now as well as I did

back when I was starting out.

A broken piece is neither pawn nor king.

There is nothing left for a book of ash.

Now you see it too.

Now you see it too.

Can’t you see it?”

ah, but even there my efforts would be lost

so dense to think that one as small as I could change the earth

I am no puppeteer

My strings are tightly woven

knotted to my arms

and legs

and head.

running criss-cross there beneath my skin.

I am no more free than any and in the world this pain does reflect.

A glass cage

A work of blinding art

entraps us all

the caged bird sings the same as any other, free-er bird

for freedom is false

we are always trapped

by bodies

memories

gravity

dirt

six feet of dirt for each of us,

or those who take a traditional route,

at least.

some prefer to become dirt to trap others

some prefer to freeze, in cold interminable.

I want to fade.

I want to lose coherency.

Become nothing.

It would be my grand achievement,

as it seems that irony is a simple device

become what so few can see the path to me becoming.

I hate to be predictable.

I hate to be simple,

easy to see,

conspicuous.

But if I weren’t,

I would frighten people even more.

I don’t want to scare you.

You may not see that.

But I laugh at my every mistake.

I find them hilarious.

Comic.

Every joke has someone messing up.

I always laugh at my own jokes.

Who’s laughing now,

I wonder?