My Own Regrets

Is it too late to take it back?

Dripping blood from mangled flesh

Hanging upside down

Deep, solid puddles of the blackest red

Is it too late to take it back?

Your wrists in mine, broken with a twist

Crackled screams as your ribs caved in

The blackened bruises already showing

Is it too late to take it back?

Flesh singed with a flick of a flame

Putrid smells of rotting ash

Drifting pieces, melting off, disintegrating

It’s too late to take it back.

Your body’s cold, numb to my touch

It shows the years of my own regret

Hanging upside down, tied up and beaten

Throat split, hanging open in useless flaps

The flames lick upwards, breaking everything

The horror and nightmare of every sound

Tormented screams echo inside me

I grind my fingertips into my own flesh

It’s too late, much too late

But I’m still sorry just the same.

-----

Sometimes it feels like I'm flailing, falling, looking for a place to grab hold.  The endless air drifting above and below me.  It's not a free fall, no, much slower.  Much less fun.

Though every once and awhile, the words form around me and start to make sense.  Even if the poetry doesn't come out right, it makes my brain settle.  The ground comes back underneath my feet and I begin to climb again.  No one is hurt, no one suffered.  The feeling that pulsated through my brain is now on paper, some of the darkest or lightest words I may have ever written sprawled before me.  Is it worth it to display myself so publicly?  Will they get what I'm originally speaking of?  Or will some English teacher twenty years from now stumble across my work and teach it as a metaphor of something that is so far off base, so far removed from the original point?

Artwork stuns me, sometimes.  Baffles me and makes me feel so small and huge at the same time.  The overwhelming feeling is also underwhelming - the world is at my fingertips, but I'm floating hundreds of miles away.  May the window to my soul make someone else reflect on their own, may the opening of my words make someone's pulse resonate with mine.

This is me.  This is not me.

It's all very existential.  And that's my mood:  Existential.

Whipping Boy

His fingernails turned black with dirt, the shovel just wasn't fast enough and his back hurt from the long day.  He turned the soil over, digging farther and farther down.  He kept looking back and forth, measuring with his eyes, making sure that he, indeed, had enough space.  Just a few more inches, he thought, a sly grin growing across his face.  The sky seemed to dance, captivated in his eyes.  A huge weight was lifted off his shoulders as he breathed in the freshly turned dirt - this should be the way everyone celebrates the end of their work week.  He wished so deeply that he could share this strange euphoria with his co-workers.  Maybe they could feel the same, if only they knew his secret.

With a gruff huff, he shoved himself off the ground, wiping his soiled hands on his khaki pants.  He almost laughed at the hand print streaks that they made, how his wife would be so angry with him for messing in the garden again, or what she thought was the garden. 

He walked a few feet east where the five foot some inches long bag was sitting.  He grabbed one edge of it and dragged it slowly towards the slightly longer three foot deep hole in the ground.  The bag rolled into the hole with a sickening thud.  The man scratched his itchy nose and then took another deep breath of fresh dirt and forest.  He didn't care how long it took the cops to find the body, he didn't care if he died after this, he just knew it was time to bask.  He could bask in the moments at work without someone breathing down his shoulder, he could finish his memoirs as everyone frantically figured out what happened to their fearful leader, he might even be congratulated for doing the deed that no one else dreamed of completing, but everyone wished they had the guts to.  Sadly, there was nothing redeemable about the boss in the bag, and although one might wish that there was - that such a cruel act of human violence should be punished, but honestly, this wasn't the person to miss.  The slave driver, manipulator, the person that stepped on everyone else and kept everyone down while clawing their way up the corporate ladder.

Yes, he thought, this was a good thing - and as he covered the bag and dirt sprinkled on the plastic like rain on a rooftop, he knew that this was the only way he could keep living.  It was either the whipper or the whipping boy, and frankly, he thought, there was no way he'd let himself end up in a shallow grave - even if he now would meet his death in a chair.

-----

It's been awhile since I've written.  I wrote another piece that will be submitted to a publisher - once I polish it.  I went on vacation - to a Unitarian Universalist camp in the woods, and it was super relaxing.  It put me back in touch with myself, made me self-reflect.  But while I was lost inside my own head, it was hard to put myself into another set of shoes.  I actually love the feeling that I get from writing.  It was nice to reflect on that, realizing that I am made for something more, and having some people affirm that I am, indeed, a half decent, if not good, writer.  So now I'm back, in full force, for one blog entry a day.  It's go time.