This is My Life

A poem day

a stifling, hot, hateful day

a day for the city to sweat from its own hot air

A journey inward

trying, trying for a good feeling

zombies running in a term paper maze

be exact

do it right

this is your life

sleepless nights 

daytime haze

tomorrow looks gray is today already

stomach hurts

wanting to double over

wanting to forget for just one moment the constricting

walls of this prison

nervous laughter

no real smiles

tears from unknown wells

broken bonds

broken promises

plastic people in pastel cages

this is my life

a whisper from a distant realm of my heart

tells me to find peace

no peace

only aching moments

only tomorrow is tomorrow is another day

but not a new one

trying to see beyond the deadline

to life again

everyone wilts beneath the pressure

not today -

tomorrow, I'll try

only promises to myself

take a bow

for something real

one day off is all I need - 

one night on the town

but no one sees the real thing

their heads are turned down

to the words

the words mean well

but are destroyed

I've come so far so fast

and now, what's this?

it is not yet time to break loose

another week and I'll be complete

holding out and holding on

night and day come as extremes

I wanted summer until it arrived

now, I'd do anything for a cold winter

summer only brings fall

and downfall

I will see it through

I will live again

it will happen, I know

Egypt to Falsetto

Falstaff to Francke

Goethe to Hearst

nothing more in this place

but this is my life

I will see it through

- April 27, 1984, A.D.

A Prisoner in All Senses

A starving emotion

the burning need for a safer feeling

an ache

a malnourished idea

of what truth is

and where faith can be found

a barren hope

of gaining hope

and evacuating the terrifying loneliness

a shot in the dark

plays tricks on my nerves

and no one to hold on to

a life sentence in my prison cell

gives me time to reflect 

how love had stripped me bare

though I never even thought I had

let it in

memories

of distant friends

never understood

never breaking through emotional barriers

but wanting

vague memories

of a happy childhood

before wanting

but the wanting overcame all other feelings

the aching hindered me

led me to make risky mistakes

it locked me up

it sent me here

now, I've lost all contact with my senses

I have memories of feelings

vague associations with real emotions

now and then, I touch upon them

but I can't commit myself to any of these

sensations

they are only history

I still want

but the wanting is different, now

I feel so caged

false motives

brought me to this cell

this isn't me, and I know it

letting the lifelessness seep into my mind,

I am a prisoner in all senses of the word

like they always tell me,

I can't escape

I have to earn my way out of here

maybe someday, I'll find out what freedom is

yet another day, and I fall victim to the wanting.

- March 29, 1984, A.D.

Confined

is there no hope

for a weather worn soul

when the storm returns after midnight?

is there nowhere to go when emotions unfold

and you find that there's no one in sight?

I am the jester

and you are the fool

I am the hero 

of tragedy's rule

and I am confined to my weather-worn box

it is here that I'll wait for the call

is there no light

in the thick of the night

that will carry me out of this darkness?

is there no one to call

or to hold when I fall

who'd help make my suffering less?

I am the jester

and you are the fool

I am the hero

of tragedy's rule

and I am confined to my weather-worn box

it is here that I'll wait for it all

I am the warrior,

rusted, unfed

my enemy dragon's

undying, undead

and I am confined to my weather-worn box

the feeling is nothing at all

- March 13, 1984, A.D.