The Criminal In Me –

“When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.”  – Nelson Mandela

Demon_Inside_ME_by_LorelainW.jpg

Resisting impulses to do and to numb.
Trying my best just to overcome
The Criminal in Me
I’m not hard by glance, at first sight,
But only I know the plight
Of the Criminal in Me
A forlorn soul, tied to earth by pain,
Inside he seeks to make life pay,
The Criminal in Me
How many times I asked to be free
All in vain, no one can see
The Criminal in Me
Addictions to things both seen and not seen
Leaving all behind to find those things
The Criminal in Me
I look for peace but yet I must be
Not controlled but living by
The Criminal in Me.

Also published in Broowaha

First published in Opinionsofeye.com

 

12182010

Advertisement

Outside Night –

 “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” – Plato

love-pray-hopee

I’m hiding in this darkness so long
That I don’t remember light.
I thought I’d open a window and see
What lives outside the night.
But on the glance of what should be hope,
I was blinded by the ray.
I never knew that light could
cause me this much pain.
But its warmth had a touch and
A sight of what could be,
I was still scared by the pain of knowing
That I really wasn’t free. 
The prison I was locked in is
A cage of my own design.
Only I could use a key of faith
One had left for me to find.
Breaking the hardened seal
of my sepulchered life,
I blinked back tears at
What’s outside night. 

Also published in Broowaha

First published in Opinions Of Eye

06262010

Crutch –

“And so, irritants, it is with this that I leave you. You are spared so that you can think of what it really is to live in a world that engenders a pain for which there is no comfort. Here is your product! You have the rest of your lives to think of this. And I suggest you think quickly, for a long life is never a guarantee.”
― Jhonen Vasquez, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director’s Cut 

il-gusto-dell-orrido

No way out, that’s plain to see,

No breaks here, at least not for me

Created someone, by choices of peers

People pleasing, bad choices in years

Time is here, for the ugly plans

Another choice, to take a stand

In the mind, I thought I’d be

Options present, from a Divine We

Way is clear, two roads to home

My destiny, no guilt to own

*

*

*

During the course of a man’s life there are certain actions which to him are inevitable. His nurture of violence, rejection, torment, and pain makes a repetition of this lineage probable in many areas. When the professionals look at his past and problems, they commit him to a destiny with their prognostications. Cursed with the Homicidal Triad, he carries the weight that his life is over and many others will end by his hand. Perversions visited on him time and again long to be reborn in a vain attempt at control and vengeance. He’s for all intents and purposes, a dangerous time bomb that, not a matter of “if” but “when”, will explode. He carries himself in a way that attracts the vermin and vultures of the dark life who, smelling blood, come and circle him in an ancient dance of death. They smell blood and think it a sign of weakness not knowing the he cut himself to draw them in. He does this so the ones he takes with him will be deserving of the death he brings. This way is clear and this way he will follow by virtue of having no other choice. No choice until one is taught to him by a God unseen, but heard and felt. His father told him that faith is a crutch for the weak, he now learns faith will save not only him but those he set his cross-hairs on and if not for the crutch, then the kill. Look for the choices you misfitted rejected ones, there’s a way that leads out of the darkness.

*

*

*

First published in Opinionsofeye.com

03302014

Fulcrum –

“There is darkness inside all of us, though mine is more dangerous than most. Still, we all have it—that part of our soul that is irreparably damaged by the very trials and tribulations of life. We are what we are because of it, or perhaps in spite of it. Some use it as a shield to hide behind, others as an excuse to do unconscionable things. But, truly, the darkness is simply a piece of the whole, neither good nor evil unless you make it so.” ― Jenna Maclaine, Bound By Sin

*

*

*

petitecem

Building my life on this fulcrum, everything I have hangs the precarious balance of needing you and needing to get away from you. Tainted is the air I breath and colored is the pain I have with the odorous stain of you. Pride bends low in wet mornings on foundation decks with those whose pain I’ve far surpassed. They’re hardened, unable to feel the pain anymore, as for me, I just got here, not so long ago, when the crucible of your hot irons scalded me into blind submission to you. I called my mother and asked her when the pain would stop, it’s been years since I’ve seen you. Yet, it’s like an hour ago I nursed the burns and savored the pleasure of you. Songs on the radio bring tears to my eyes, every sweet moment of tenderness I glimpse between lovers brings a knot to my throat, a wrenching in my gut, and a fresh trail of moist sorrow from my eyes that runs down my neck and seeps under my shirt. In the routine of living, where mourning was a stranger, are found new altars of sadness. Shaking from holding back the tears, the doctor says he can’t get the MRI to take a good picture. I’m partying with good friends, but I’m hollow, so I go outside for some fresh air and to shed more drops of missing you. They say, “Quit your whining. Jesus, everyone goes through shit!”, but you know, sometimes the shit just gets to be too much, too often, and too long. I’d not be the first strong one to break under the pressure of love gone wrong. I won’t break and to live isn’t hard, but to love you and love another is the tortuous path ahead of me and a balance I must achieve.

*

*

*

Also published in Broowaha

First published in Opinionsofeye.com

 

Restless

“I am so tired – so tired of being of being whirled on through all these phases of my life, in which nothing abides by me, no creature, no place; it is like the circle in which the victims of earthly passion eddy continually.” ― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South 

forensicate

Exhausted, breathless from every chase

Every path comes back on itself

I’m no farther down the road

Then when I first began

Lessons learned but hard to follow

I repeat them again on this crazy journey

I suppose the simplicity of what I am

Is clearest in the darkness of wandering

If I’ve found one thing that’s sure and true

Peace is precious and hard to find

Harder to get and even harder to keep

If the wars on the outside put me in

The wars on the inside put me out
There is no rest and perhaps

That’s the next step

This rest that evades me

Will continue to hide

Until I find the peace

That cries in the night

Leaving – The Death of Love

“With my last breath, I’ll exhale my love for you. I hope it’s a cold day, so you can see what you meant to me.
” 

– Jarod Kintz, This is the best book I’ve ever written, and it still sucks

 

radikal

I gave love the last burst of my precious energy, 
hoping to revive her before she passed on to the light. 
No shock on earth could ever start her heart again, 
growing cold as stone before my eyes. 
The hardness creeps in like darkness at sunset, 
first intriguing and beautiful, but then, a cold wind 
blows from the darkness, night is coming. 
One last chance I gave love, I started a fire in her, 
using all the dead things I had in me as fuel. 
Nevertheless, she refused to breathe. 
Now I feel her life ebbing from my soul. 
Her presence evaporating from my heart. 
Left with the cracked parched earth of my soul, 
thirsty for wetness, she refuses to live. 
Have you ever felt someone leaving your soul?

Have you ever felt someone leaving your soul?

Also published in Broowaha

Hidden

“Camouflage is a game we all like to play, but our secrets are as surely revealed by what we want to seem to be as by what we want to conceal.” – Russell Lynes  

darkjinn

Cloaks, shields, cover for you.

Duck, run, defense for you.

Leaves they blend with your skin

Camouflage from within.

Scent not your own,

Voice unknown.

Scant you appear.

Leaning away in fear.

Shadows, darkness to confuse

Who can know you, when hiding is your muse?

Also published in Broowaha Magazine

011811 

A Question of Manhood

 “That paper–it sits there, open at the employment section. It sits there like a war, and each small advertisement is another trench for a person to dive into. To hope and fight in.” ― Markus Zusak, Fighting Ruben Wolfe

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”
– Dale Carnegie 

punemployment

General malaise. That’s what the doctor said. The medical term didn’t mean a thing to me, what was important was the why?  What’s lost is a purpose, duty, and usefulness. When I lost my abilities and thereby my job, I lost more than money. My reputation took a hit, with my ego falling hard soon after, then, a darkness, like a twilight that makes it hard to see unless I look away from the object. Men commit suicide in these moments. Subtle injuries to self esteem, normally peeling away like water off the leaves, cut deeper and stay longer. My image was built and maintained by the acquisition of wealth. When money leaves, my foundation rocks and shakes leaving me unbalanced and with the lingering question, “What now?”, “What will I do?”, “What else am I good at?” People make career changes all the time, but what is my calling, mylife’s ambition? What will I be satisfied with? There are no easy answers, just a raw pain, like a burn on my soul, evidenced by the blush of shame on my cheeks as I struggle to answer the question that makes a man a man, “What do you do for a living?”

Grey – A peek from under the wet blanket

“It’s an art to live with pain… mix the light into gray.” – Eddie Vedder

late-on-time

Listen, while I tell you a story of grey. The grey wraps around my soul in a haze of unwanted anxiety, a watered down black, like dark swirls in spoiled milk. These streaks of deteriorated joy cover my lens, my warm blanket soaked with fruitless tears. Feelings are sharp and cutting, nothing is gained by the sorrow. My grey love backfires, I point it toward her but the pain is set loose on my soul. This grey soaks me, in vain I try to keep myself warm in the breeze of cool emotion. Grey is my elixir of madness. I drink deep from the drought of darkness gone bad. Stormy clouds gather, a condensation of holiness evaporated from the lake of my soul, leaving it a lifeless puddle of unfathomable sorrow. Now you know of my affliction my curious companion, my lifelong condition of grey. Pray that you escape its mesmerizing effects and that you with the brightness of healthy hope, avoid this quicksand of a tortured mind.

For help with depression: Symptoms, Warnings, Solutions

05312012

Sieve – Losing All Through Me

“You are to be my command laid on my enemy. you’ll make a hole in him through which he’ll drip away until he runs dry. As he drips out darkness, we’ll smile together, me inside, you outside. We’ll crush him between our smiles.”- Margaret Mahy, The Changeover 

A little gap, in which I must wallow

Just a hole, one of the many to follow

A poke again, a partner to the first

Its just a hole, draining the water for thirst

This sieve of soul, now bleeds my affection

Its just a hole, so no need for correction

I catch the drops, so many all around

It just a hole, but I lost all I found