Mad Man

I couldn’t tell you of madness, the exotic kind, the unburdened type, the loose walls, crumbled breaths, and decibels of a hyena’s laughter. But I could tell you of the slippage of control, of painless danger, the unbroken inertia met with clenched teeth and worse, a clenched heart -- the blood will overflow, we might all explode, and remorse is buried in code.

He stood with a cloak of reservation, spoke with protection against the current, and told us all, “You are better than you let yourself be” and revelations of hell led the tumble on the way down, guilt presses its freshly sharpened blade against your neck. And you better believe to count the seconds of your heart pumping, and never let the flesh too close or he will let you bleed.

I could tell you that the man was just like an act of kindness we know we can never be. It's the forgiving angel and we're blessed just to have her - can't you see the sacrifice she made? But we cannot see, no, we cannot feel anything except our bruised ribs, our mighty silences, and the distances between us and everyone else.

We cannot grow, no, we cannot harden our defenses for much longer, or find the way home with a thunder in our ears. The voices in our heads are only louder in an empty room, and the room seems eternally lonely, barefoot in the sand and sun on our faces -- we think to ourselves, “We don’t deserve this”, but we have it anyways.

Like the heavens, like a drifting spell up above, like the way we cold-hearted b******s feel so small looking at the constellations, searching for hopeless answers about the demons below - we romanticize our settlements, our lost hope. We became what we once believed we didn't truly deserve.

But this is all like an internal Armageddon, similar to the burdens of a last man's stand for survival in the wild. We are patrons to the blood of the jungle. We’ll sharpen our blades with black stones and call it necessary, stab the untamed boar and call it hunger, drag our lips over metallic blood and call it love.

The truth is I’d give you everything I had if I knew what that was, but I stand a bearer of spilled blood among a gathering for the ages, and paint myself a victim, a mercenary for a greater cause. His cloak continues to spell the words of a lost mission, of new commands beyond reach of denial.

The mad man thrashes in his cage, and binds his hands with the bars. I can see him bleeding inside already, he makes victory limitless, but only if we can pry his hands away from the grip of reality.

I should find it strange, that the mad man, arm still entwined with the bars as he bleeds from his back, turns to look at me, and say the same words of who commands his death, “You are better than you let yourself be”. But there is nothing to be found, except a lost soul in the roar of the jungle's applause.

Author's Note

I think there's a slight loophole in the wording towards the end. And to clarify the imagery, there's three 'characters' - the self, the mad man, and the ruler.