Can I escape the ubiquitous, omnipotent lull of remiss negligence

Can I prove to myself that I should live on

The rope tightens ever so

 

I

 

Lilac sunbathed stars writhe and strangulate

The universe is a perfectly balanced machine

Oiled and ready to perform it’s mundane ever-infinite tasks

Absent and astray are the times of yore

Absent and astray is my purpose

 

Often there is a feeling of uselessness

Often there is nothing inside but emptiness

Why do I try if all there is to greet me at the end is a tomb

Why do I try if all I am is meaningless

Absent and astray is my purpose

 

Denizens of over-stuffed societies mingle and waddle about

Steel deathtraps roam the streets as they have forever

And I do as I have done forever

And I do as I will always do

Absent and astray is my purpose

 

Can a person truly find their dignity

In the shadowy chambers of former pride

In the echoing tunnels of our minds

Can a person truly find a purpose

Absent and astray is my purpose

 

Proclaimed upon the steps of my forebearers’ hearts

There is a salt-soaked cloth upon which livelihood is scrawled

There is a man chanting rhythmic tidings of somber diminutive  

There is my purpose

Absent and astray

 

Best described is life

As an eternal interment

Best described is suffering

As life

Absent

 

What do they speak of

When they say they are in love

What do they speak of

When they say they are happy

Astray

 

Absent and astray is my purpose

Absent and astray is my drive

Absent and astray is my happiness

Absent and astray is my passion

Absent and astray

 

II

 

Brothers and sisters of Gaia

Gather ‘round the spinning tabletop of coherence

Give up your deepest inhibitions to the cage

Give up your lives to the overbearing sage

 

Her hair a brisk cider-wreathed sugar cane

Her smile a glinting ice uprooting existence itself

Her love a coddling warm boa grip

Her every word a droll quip

 

I am a sullen husk of imperfection

Gathering dust on the shelf of indolent existence

Bringing up the forlorn and miniscule tidings of a time long past

I’ve not a chance now that the die is cast

 

Every idiosyncratic mingling a bore

Save for when it is with her

Every imbecilic moment a suffering time

Save for when I hear her chime

 

Would it be too far-fetched to say she is a flower

Too cliché to say she is my sun

Too pitious to say she is all I care for

That she is all I ever will adore

 

III

 

Why do singing men sing of happiness

Why do birds chirp so gleeful

Have they gone adrift into madness

Or perhaps they have just become boastful

 

Beyond any reasonable doubt

Jubilance is a nonexistent jest

Beyond any incessant shout

Beyond anyone’s persistent behest

 

Have you all forgotten what we are

Our hands bound by chains and links

Our lives as purposeful as burning char

Going up in smoke to take leave with god’s drinks

 

I am wroth with rage at the notion

That I am kept in such internment

That despite all of my irate motion

No one person can make discernment

 

O, take me off someplace nicer than here

O, show me a garden of love and eternity

O, take me away ‘ere

O, show me that the world still has use for magnanimity

 

For I am a prisoner in internment

For I am a soul lost in the sea of solitude

For I am a man fighting against all adjournment

For I am a coward garbed in ineptitude

 

IV

 

My screams go unheard

My warnings fall on deaf ears

My cries of sorrow are ignored

Am I to be this way forever

A man caught in internment

 

Is there not a way out

A key to enlightenment

Is there not a neon-lit exit

A passage to something more

Or is this all I have to expect

 

Prison is not a place of concrete

Nor is it synonymous with rebar

Prison is the mind

Prison is the body

Prison is here

 

So I sit upon a bed floating in the sea

So I lay thoughtless

Full of thought

So I am

So I’m forever to be

 

Existence is but a teardrop

Building speed upon the cheek of Achlys

Exuding from naught but her overcharged duct

Collapsing upon the ground with an unimportant thud

Obliteration catches the precipice and leaps up angrily to greet us

 

V

 

The world isn’t a playground

More of a torture room

More of a demented way of keeping us in pain

The world is the ultimate punishment

I

 

Why do we fight so strongly

Against what we don’t know

Why do we fight so weakly

Against what is known best

Am

 

Can there please be an intermission

Some sort of respite

From the horrors of living

So I can find peace

So

 

God knows it

The devil wills it

I cannot keep living this way

A man in internment

Alone

 

I am so alone

Running across the rooftops of my thoughts

Absent and astray

Absent

Astray