All these heaps of words
As I try to purge
Every passing desire and reaction
Verbalizing tangents and distractions
In a mad dash
To diagnose and excise
The cause of my necrosis.
Author Archives: viewingcamelot
About viewingcamelot
Back-Alley Butcher
Bereaved
I don’t remember me.
I try to imagine myself,
But she slips farther away,
She changes her face.
I don’t remember
Who I was…
What I loved…
Was I pleasant?
Quiet?
Loud?
Irritating?
Some people liked being around me.
Others couldn’t stand me.
What was I like to talk to?
Was I kind?
What did I hope for?
What made me laugh?
Do I have a baseline
Hidden somewhere
Or am I all washed out to sea?
When the moment came,
No one cared what happened to me.
I think that’s what killed me.
Diurnal Deliverance
Joy comes in the morning.
I believe You; I’ll say once more.
In spite of the calluses forming
But I can’t be sure
When comes the morning.
Riptide to the Undertow
Oh God,
This place has been so full.
I don’t know where I’ll go next.
I just know this is too much
The anticipation wrecks
My broken station.
I can’t live in
All the ways I’m never enough
While I’m still branded by public ridicule
And, at home, forever unloved;
I can’t offer more.
Trying my absolute best,
I wasted all the chances I made
I don’t have anything worth anything
To build, or barter, or trade.
I’m too proud to sell.
If I tried as hard as I could try
Maybe this is the best
I could have deserved
Maybe I can rest
Knowing I could never have earned
Safe arms.
Maybe it’s time to recoil
Into what is actually mine
And give up on love.
Give myself to the brine
Of undertow.
Please, Guardian of my soul,
Be Greater than all my regrets.
Protect me from me.
Hearthless
I’m a little too everything else
To be anything at all.
In the distant hills of my soul,
I kept hearing a cricket call
To come home again
To dirt and bugs and grass,
To the weather inside,
And time fit to pass.
It got so dang loud
I dropped just about everything
To try to find my home
In the meadow where the crickets sing
But only the crickets
Remember me.
Now I’m just a little
Too much of everything.
Comfortless Creatures
When longing stretches
Like the shadows and echoes
Like the rattles
Of omens and nightmares
In gossamer gowns
And the frightened girl hides
In plain sight,
And desires the phantom arm
To make things right
She waits and wails
In silent sobs
For the end of the endless night.
45 Years Blind
I have believed
Though born of monsters
And capable of drawing blood
That if I kept myself muzzled
It would be enough
To change my DNA.
I have tried to call out
Every monster that feeds
As though the betrayal
Will prove I’m not theirs.
I have pulled teeth.
But the lie only exists
Because my eyes face outward.
Everyone who looks at me
Sees me.
Sees what I am.
All that’s left,
Now that I’ve seen me,
Is to fold in to the tragedy
That cannot be avoided,
And keep good people
Away.
From Monster I was born;
To Monster I return.
Freighthopping
I’m packing up my last bags.
I bled honest with them, to my shame.
They’re the witnesses in my wake.
The humiliations I sustained
Insults alongside my final breaks
By those who move on to better days.
The echoes of what they did to me,
And what they wouldn’t do for me,
Will follow my every road,
But they will never see,
They will never know,
The ghost in their joys.
I will fade quickly from memory.
Where there’s no remorse,
There’s no retention
The final petal follows its course
To the silent detention
Of waiting dirt and stillness.
They cannot understand
The guilt of their actions
So I give them their absolution
The weight of their exactions
Destroyed my solutions
But my brief window may have shattered either way.
I can never know.
Maybe the remainder of my days
Were meant to be spent
Like the rest of my tragic stay.
No one knew how to repent,
And they heard my full say.
I never found a way to make it okay.
Or to show them the horror of their pride.
And they were never honest or penitent.
I have been tempted
To wish them haunted
By the girl they abandoned to stones
As cold as their own souls
But I leave that all in the Hands of God.
Psalms 17:10 NASB1995
They have closed their unfeeling heart, With their mouth they speak proudly.
Swansong of Sparrows
I’ve had two parts of my heart
Warring since I arrived,
The bigger part beat in hope
The lesser felt the bitter strive,
But there’s been one too many blows.
Some part of me once asserted
Life could still weave
Wonderful surprises
But I no longer believe
My life will hold any of those.
Necrosis spreads quickly
Leaving hope unsung
The black scarring threatens
A jaded, mocking tongue.
No one will care. No one will see
When I cease to believe.
And the only one anyone could ever blame
Is me.
viewingcamelot 