The world gone apocalyptic in a twinkling of an eye. As predicted. No one could have ever guessed we'd move so fast.
It would be silly to get mad, Max. As so many are to blame. There's not one you could label as enemy, sentence to burn black charred and expect it to subside.
Once the ending is set in motion, the dominos fall all by themselves. No breath of human air - sparkling exuberant candles extinguished at a lavish birthday party - need be added. The fires will die on their own once everything is burned beyond AI recognition.
Stars perhaps
light the way
upward
beyond
not a guide
but a mirage
dream apparition
to us here below
that this
is not
all there is
Shadows we have always with us
where we create heat and warmth
the opposite hangs back a cardigan
around our shoulders old tattered
clinging reminding us of darkness
chill that biting nip sting frigidity
long ago I battened down my hatches
shuttered my doors swallowed the key
determined never to let in hurt harm
pain injustice agony affliction torment
alone in the dark I still shuddered dread
the fear within perhaps not from without
mistaken I flung open windows smashed
all my locked orifices walked to the light
torrential rains burst open tornados came
I retreated yet the wind blew my door shut
made frosted animals on my closed panes
making me creep into a closet lock that door
I was never meant to be in this world naked
too easily frozen is my flesh and things beneath
too tough to breathe air stirred with emotions
dim dingy inky unlit not of my own making
I realized in the cold dark dread
of a tossed turned tangled sheet
night
that I would die alone
I could have settled
married reproduced
kept touch with people
made friends kept some
just one or two maybe
but no
I'm in this alone
and it scares me
I have no where
to turn for help
I'm not apt to die not just yet
but know when I do no one
will come to cry shed a tear
or read poems
over
my burnt ashes
your eye is my universe
looking backwards through my microscope
I close up bacteria attached to rotting flesh
it is not good to magnify reality
I study your pupil
specks of green dot soft brown lines fading
to a chilling black hole in space sucking me
in pulling yanking my helpless toward you
you study my skin
1000 times expanded and see every pimple
bump flaw blemish defect foible weakness
causing you to retch at the sight spectacle
I'm a sin eater
greedy for dried up moldy scrapes of bread
brown worm infested fruit left for the gods
I'll eat anything other people's transgressions
what are a few more added to my own pile?
So serve me up in a platter large
bulging fat full ready to explode
at the poke of a knife fork prick
pissing vomit half-digested sins
mine & others all over the gods
my illness commonplace
diagnosed too often long ago
bipolar cyclic insanity manic depression
oh how I long for those blasted highs
that shot me up magnificent unstoppable invincible
only to lay me lower than I thought a man could go
for a period that felt like every cat's life had past
and then up I went fighting invisible dragons
with the shifting of the sun's angle
only to fall like the wicked in my own vomit feces
till the meds came and evened me like a pancake
dry gummy fried over easy chalk in my mouth
and then you sit leering over me
expecting to hear me retell every sordid tale
to which you nod hmmm take notes on crumbled paper
trash thrown to the floor I will never be whole you say
I spit you out to grab back on the horse that brung me
but the pony won't gallop do tricks I've lost my ride
so back into darkness Plato's cave to meander
lost alone to find soul mind meaning self
which self is me?
do I exist without my illness?
medicated unmedicated who am I?