Poetry Attempt: A dedication to unhealthy habits

 

Slip

Spiral expanding,

The long way down 

Finally catching up

Swallowing cavern of barbed shadows 

And acidic flares 

Corruscates beneath 

The expanding desert snuffing out

Malnourished flames of rationality 

Left burning behind my dying eyes. 

Sleeping to armageddon 

Carefully manicured porcelain mask shattered 

Carve me out a new face 

A grimacing pierrot

Something able to properly emote

As a noose of knotted black hair 

Reeking of rotten cherries and tongues laced with tobacco 

Stitches its way through the leech-like 

Laceration across my neck.

Regression setting in 

I’m ready to let everyone down.

There’s only one coping method left.  

Deliver me from the irreversible,

Erase my scars and gift to me

A brand new canvas of flesh 

To slice repeatedly into. 

I’ll always return

To a thousand faceless, weeping gashes 

And comfortably gleaming cold steel. 

Pale light spins 

Wraps itself around the world

And wrings out all meaning, 

Anything logical, nothing able to properly get through. 

Stability erupts, 

Melting into starry pools of dangerous ideation.

Nothing effective against 

The tyrannical itching urge,

While all shards of pain and uncertainty are

Felt too drastically 

As faces screaming for the end 

Ooze out of my closing-in walls,

Ushering me closer and closer 

To my transformation 

Of self-mutilated remains. 

Lungs shrink and sing a last goodbye 

Head succumbs to a squirming, overthinking 

Pustule of panic,

No more flesh left on my aching fingers

To shred and peel away at

All the chemical nonsense tablets evaporate

To ineffectual dust

Long before they reach my already contaminated bloodstream.

My brain is left as a malignant lump,

Wrongly wired at its ill-fated inception

That should have never been

Only to perpetuate an infinite assault against itself

I can only hope for the compounding regrets 

And pangs of self-hatred

To ultimately cause this shrieking tumor to finally cease to function. 

Time and again

Reopening the keloid gates,

Letting the crimson pollution slowly 

Deliquesce out

Has proven to be the only momentary cure,

A fleeting silencer

Mockery of a moment of control,

I already know it’s futile 

And largely pointless,

Just something more to be ashamed of,

Long before I commit to

The attack on my veins.

After all these empty years and 

Graying, pock-marked months,

An unhit vein is becoming difficult to find.

Every scar

An associated failure

At cutting off my longevity,

A pale remainder of an inability 

To exist. 

Trained to believe that nothing will last, 

Everything ends,

Even these gashes only provide an infinitesimal fraction of release,

There’s only one lasting comfort left;

Between the gradually blurring vision and

The forever-expanding void,

In contrast to the countless faceless entities prophesizing my collapse,

At least I’ll know

That one day 

One swift, deep cut

Will be my last. 

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