Poetry: #108 Pessimistic Pessimism (Used 16)
A selection from a personal collection: Used
Preface
As this collection unfolds each week, I want you, dear reader or listener, to understand that no matter what you’re going through, what you’ve been through, there is an end—there is light at the end of the tunnel. Letting go of the past is only possible if you live in the present. Make the past history, learn what you can about yourself, at whatever pace is comfortable, and I promise your present will take you to a brighter future.
Pessimistic Pessimism
There is nothing left inside me with the desire to lead my heart away from you. There is nothing left within me that will ever lead me back to you. There is no reason for the absence that I have felt for so long to remain as hungry as it has been. There is no desire more that I might have than to do your bidding, to look up to you as I used too. I found ways to show how I cared; even now I still find your graceful impact in my life. The problem I have is not with you but of what you represent to me. What has been taken from me…I’m not inept of understanding what you have given me; no I am merely unwilling to see through the shadows you have swamped me in. I do not wish to know what you represent because it is you, the perfect being I should put all my trust in, you have shown me love like I have never imagined. I was addicted and you decided to take my drug away. Now I’m left to rot here with all my shame. I always boasted of my limited, if any at all, regrets that I have had, the truth is I do not regret the very decisions I have made that I should regret. I thought that at the time there not be a single fret. Yet here I am less than a year later realizing how wrong I have been. I have failed. And as successful as I become I will only have a larger regret that I am unwilling to admit. I will watch as the cancer grows within me and consumes me, and I simply do not wish to fight it. Why fight what I am? Why must I struggle for what others have been taking for granted, and even when they point out how much more I have then them they cannot possibly comprehend what they have…You who know what love is, you who can accept what you have been given. You who are not weary of the company you keep. At least you have those mostly intangible nouns. All I have is all my things and I still frown. I find no reason to get up other than I have class to educate myself with. No other reason than I am required to go to work at a specified time so that I can continue living. I do not care that I am hungry, I only care that I can sleep. That I exist is all that I am thankful for currently. When I socialize it is out of need to stimulate the mind so that I do not lose it. I am more than willing to trick to get what I need so that I might find a small particle of happiness deep inside. Every time it gets harder, and the further down I go the more I look for those tid-bits of pleasure so that I can treasure them for moments. After their time is gone I am left more desolate than before, sometimes without my own continence. I leave myself as open as the whore I met last week walking down the street. I find some small solace, yes solace, that I can finally indulge in the one act with someone else and not find myself an uncontrollable ball of passion. To be a beast I thought would be good for me in the absence of what you, my good sir, have left me. I am alone. I may not be as alone as I could be, but certainly more alone than any other can possibly know. All these so-called friends, they fill the gaps where I must be active, but I am only active to sedate my own thoughts for but a second. I am only active because it is required of me. Like a dystopian society I march along doing what I need to do to contribute to others. I help them in ways I wish someone could possibly help me… I’ve always been pessimistic. Something that once I saw how terrible our culture today is I’ve always been. I tried to keep my head up, my chin. And yet, all I find is more reason to seclude myself from others, to castrate my own ability to meet and feel and know what others know. I would rather sit alone. It’s easier, it’s less stress, it’s safer. It’s safer than lending my heart to some sick person to use and throw it in the dirt like a broken whore overdosed on heroin. Heroin…that’s a drug I despise with more venom than the atrocious political parties I fight against. Why do I hate it so? It couldn’t be that I long for the cool stillness, the inky blackness of floating like sleeping but more pleasurable…I wish for what I cannot have without dying and yet I ask myself how many times have I counted down from ten and said no to the raven? How many times last year before I realized I had lost my desire to know you? How many times did I wake up at night and say I want to live longer than I anticipate simply defying myself in meeting you. Simply to prove my will is stronger than my desire; but is it not the same? No, I have found that at the one-year anniversary of this travesty I have found myself in has started that I am not over what you have done to me. I am not willing to admit, at least subconsciously where it really counts, that you have tested me unlike any other entity and I have proven myself unworthy. Where there is a mysterious way, you find it and I call you out and I mention to others look at what you have wrought. But please, don’t look there, as that is where I have fought. Where I have nearly died. Where every retched thought I have has burned away my flame, my wick, my desire to write. I wanted to know what love was like so that I might write about it in a way I could not have imagined before. I was more right about what sex and love and pain and all those damned emotions I felt were before I ever felt them. They are a flash in the pan, an instance of pleasure, a stripper’s wet dream, a moment’s lapse in reason, a true test of those who are seasoned. I enjoyed those seconds each and every one until I realized that eventually the others would run dry and I would be left with more to give…but now I am alone. And who wants a pessimistic person whose sole desire is to present himself as successful and show others how to be as well when in reality I am more unsuccessful at living, at the very phrase “adulting”, than every friend I can count on my hands…It’s not hard when I only need one hand, but I can do quick math with large complex numbers and I can’t count higher than five without stretching my definition of those I know. I have met the reality of those around me, and I pity them that they do not see what is hardly there. I see no comfort in physical objects any longer; I see no reason to play a game that will no longer exist when I am finished. It hurts me to know my only love I had I threw away because I thought I knew the difference between preferential and eternal love and how I have failed you. Both of you, all of you… I am not worthy to be loved and yet at least one of you still does. I do not understand it and until I can love myself again, find a reason to pursue more than a mere existence I will not attempt to love either of you again. I’ve burnt out, my poetry has fallen flat, and even now I cannot fathom these words with rhyme like I once could. Then again, does it even matter that I should? Is it my responsibility to retain that ability? To provide the poetic, moving, diabolical words I once wrote with ease? Writers block is one thing that occurs in stories, novels, not these. Not poems, not soul. I have found myself glowering at music of all genres trying to be inspired. The only songs I can find that fit the bill happen to be nothing but what originally started this entire cycle and I feel myself edging towards the same mistake. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice shame on you, fool me a third time… I will have no choice but to hang myself out to dry, and let the wind take me away, let my body rot into the air, find some reason for my physical being to mean something to another. To find a reason to even care to exist in the first place. I know they will all show up at my deathbed, my coffin, my gravesite, but where the hell were they when I needed them most? Are they even here for me or for their own self-pitying habits that they did not foresee this inconvenience in their lives? Where the hell were they being selfless when I was alive? I gave many my all and received naught but a cold shoulder in return. I do not hold grudges but hypocrisy kills me. In this case it is almost literal how shaken they will be at what they might perceive as a tragedy when in reality it is merely a way to prove to my ectoplasmic self how terrible my friends, my acquaintances, really were. They never cared, they said they loved me and they lied. Why should I believe in a lie and why should I follow something to the grave only to find that preferential love is a way of getting around the fact that we do not truly love others but tolerate at different levels. That when push comes to shove there are lust, preference, and eternal love and none of the three ever mix. If they do, then all hell breaks loose. Hmfp, lives fall apart with each individual status anyway so why do I differentiate? Truth is; there is only the lie that love exists in any form we can conceive, and that is why I choose not to believe. I see no point to follow blindly when the end result is the same. Let me burn out my candle long and slow or quick and fast; the ending is the same. I am left without wax. No wick, nothing besides an empty container when all is said and done, and it is that exact reason that I do not wish to continue to run. I shall not participate in a marathon to find love when love itself is unattainable. Its very nature is actually a goal, not an objective to reach but an ever longer ladder to the ends of only God knows where. For God is the eternal spring of love and no matter how far into the clear waters you search his beginning is further still. No matter how small we seek we find God present in everything. And until I reconcile my misdeeds and indeed missed deeds too, for, and because of him—in whichever manner is most appropriate—I search for a way to no longer blame myself but look past what has transpired and discover what new horizons exist beyond the green pastures just beyond the valley and mountains. I know there is more to the story, but I have no desire, no reason, and still no method for traversing the distance between me and that golden land. My goal is nothing more than the most I can reach for. If I succeed then I failed to set the goal high enough and reclassify it is an objective. Goals should never be attained, but rather a wrung on a ladder further up than every objective set. Goals were not meant to be met but to increase the status quo, to prevent a lull in productivity in the set of circumstances. I sit here bantering in the hopes to find my voice. To find an excuse to sleep soundly without ill will, for it is that very reason that I cannot rest. I do not hold grudges and rest, and I certainly do not retain anger when I sleep. It causes more pain than to suffer without the sleep and know consciously every painful thought. Once it is felt, it can generally be laid to rest to start again, with a new slate. I can attest that is it possible, if only I was smarter. Intelligent enough to realize my own plunders and accept that regrets are a normal release in life. If only I were able to let go of my love I would be able to find love and thereby continue to love in a less satanic method. If only I would just listen to God, if only I would have listened to myself all those years ago. If only I could find a way to not live my memories over and over and over again. It is not by choice, entirely, that I conclude this letter. It is not by my choice, entirely, that I am the way I am. I am possibly more to blame for I know what I do and how awful it might be for me, yet I also know that I chose this path. That if my struggle is easy, then I will not be satisfied in the end. The hardest part is knowing the uncontrollable urges I have and the fact that I am not mentally stable in the capacity I might think I am. There is a dark passenger within me, and it hurts my heart whenever I think I am fine. It feeds me sour thoughts when I am hungry for something else. It forces me to grimace with pain and anger the likes of which I should not possess; the kind I barricaded myself from so that I could be a normal person once more. The demons within my own mind have finally found the way through the barricades and are no longer waiting to cause me pain. It is for these reasons, that I can self-diagnose my ailments, that I know there is something inherently off balance within me. Something, that only a true heart-breaking tragedy could bring out of my deepest recesses. It is something that flourishes in those who are void of love. It is a torture I live with and something that I must control at least in public so that I might seem normal. Truth of the matter is I am not, and never will be, yet I strive for normalcy because that is the only way I can be extraordinary.
What are your thoughts on this poem?
Another poem drops every Saturday and there’s short stories, essays, and What the Book Podcast drops too!