Depths of Something Disturbing

It began with a long day in bed when I slipped too deeply into my head… Short walk to class, an hour long now trying to avoid the eyes of each person I pass by.

I am the person walking up and down the same flight of stairs, convinced, utterly convinced this is the quickest way to nowhere.

I am the hollow-eyed nightmare shaking, standing in the campus square, trying to ascertain which direction I was supposed to go.

I am the unreachable stranger walking laps through the mall bundled thick in winter jackets on an August hot day, speaking nothing to no one, softly muttered to no one.

These are the gaps in my flesh – please come take a peer at this hollowness, the oblivion inside these cracks.

This is the fragile waste bucket seated beside you in class, huddle forward on my desk with a face distantly pacing the floor beside my chair; that is my spunk right there on the desk, naked and scared and bared boneless for all to feast.

Bury yourself face-first in the muck of this mire, self-negated with nothing left to hide, nothing to strive for or to die; the wandering days melting down the clock-faces into a formless pulp rid of meaning.

These are troubled times.

The skeleton stalks through the bookshelves for something to eat, having found behind his eyes the rats that infest the manifolds of his brain; having found nothing of interest, he wastes 7 hours browsing internet trash, and then goes back to sleep.

This is the trouble with trying to complete the litany of tasks dictated by a dream of socially-acceptable success – these dents in the table are the blood-smudges of a forehead that bears repeating: It cannot fucking focus. Have you paid your fucking speeding tickets?

Did you finish your homework on time?

Did you remember to pay the bills your wife keeps asking you to pay the bills but instead I put rat-traps in the ceiling is what I did for all of fifteen minutes yesterday. That is what I did yesterday. The rats haven’t been heard again and I am safely huddled in my bed trying not to openly weep; it is now my new belief the rats are dead.

There is a purpose here buried in the interference and the babble of a family speaking distantly at Christmastime – distantly from across the dinner table. And the task here is keeping track of the echoes to listen for my name while simultaneously keeping track of the little sparking flashes fluttering ‘cross my corneas. The fluttering it needs to be pinned…

to stick them to the wall with nails pulled from this cranial rot, stick them to the walls the butterflies with their wings spread wide and poke at them, the wings, until I’m sure each one has died.

But I am utterly convinced it is just as futile to die.