Poetry Attempt: A Task to Force Myself to Confront Myself

 Someone asked me to try to write a poem that acknowledges my younger self and "sees" him for who he was in an attempt to bring some sort of sense of understanding to who I am and what I was. The following is what I came up with, I don't think it exactly accomplishes what this person wanted me to accomplish. Furthermore, many years ago I wrote a poem detailing and putting myself back into a reoccurring nightmare I had throughout my childhood. Incidentally, this new poem sort of became a sequel of sorts to that old piece of writing. But that old poem is not available for anyone to read as of right now, and that will probably remain like that until my hopefully approaching death. 

Nightmare Degeneration

 

I don’t know you

But I still dream all your dreams

And feel chained 

To all your atrocities. 

Despite the barbaric contempt

I’ll forever hold against you,

We share the same torrent of terror

And putrid genes 

In the ailing flow of our bloodstream

You couldn’t possibly know yet

How often I’d try

To shed it all away

Through slashing and lacerating,

Slow down the flow

Never getting deep enough

Or at the right vein

Leading only to lumps of scars,

Irritatingly regenerating scabs,

Proving to ourselves 

That we, unfortunately, can still feel

We’re still made of the same human parts

As everyone else,

Failing to bring decay to our D.N.A 

Make sense of compounding memories

Of our own monstrosity - but it’s never enough

There’s nothing unique to your suffering

As long as there’s life in our veins 

We’ll forever screech hatred 

At each other,

No matter what form our unreliable perception 

Makes us take. 

But how could you know

How pointless this would all be?

-

Toiling in the welcoming winter dirt

Underneath the black sunrise, 

Eyes rolling over, coal dark

And repeatedly pierced with singed tree branches 

Feeling the world spin violently 

Backwards

With no evidence that I’m a part

Of any of this.

A reflection in the dead frost,

I’m an ectopic miscarriage

Curled up on the disintegrating

Pelvic bone of reality.

So I wrap a noose 

Made of stretched skin 

And bloodied paper clips

‘Round my slashed and

Exsanguinating throat 

My noxious tired tears plowing the land below

While distorted synthesized choirs

Die out under plagued blankets 

Of crimson snow. 

I look to my right…

Ugly schism in space cracks open 

And weeps

Through it, I see my face again,

Swollen, small, and unfamiliar, 

Taken back to the corrupting dream;

Drowned in uncanny familiarity 

An assaulting unknowable misery

Stitches together the haloed gray clouds

Building the cold, concrete stage

For another black-out pummeling 

Another episode of lost control,

Misdirected depression expression

Night after endless night.

They’re cowering under false shadows

Casted by the invaded home

Wailing to shreds

At the voice with no mouth 

The form without shape 

An anger with no brain 

And no outlet in sight

Besides smashed furniture and 

The shivering renditions 

Of the ones who’ll deny 

All they can

That they’re the ones who 

Created you. 

Echoing chorus of fists rains down

On loathsome flesh passed to us

You and I know

We’re next.

If the time ever comes,

If the dream ceases to descend,

If the years of doomed repetition 

Wasn’t already set in place,

If we didn’t share the same 

Mocking string of stars

Anticipating the slaughter 

Of any light left in our eyes. 

You’ve seen too much. 

This is it,

I wish I could tell you differently,

There’s no other outcome,

I wish you didn’t have to turn into 

Me. 

-

The nightmare always ends the same; 

You, as a tiny asphyxiating shadow 

Draining into the pavement 

Sick roses taking root in your soul,

Tightly coiled fetal position 

As those responsible, the bearers of your blood,

And the bringers of dread-fueled nights,

Continue to be beaten to ceaselessly screaming pulps.

And as the darkness reigns

Nothing but suicidal guilt 

Flows into your underdeveloped head. 

You can’t understand

They’ll forever do what they can

To convince you it’s you who’s broken

Monstrous

Dispossessed

Diseased

Prematurely rotting

From the inside out

Spouting assailing venom from your

Sickness-speckled head. 

It’s not you,

We were unknowingly handed

The passed-down poisoned chalice 

And force-fed the generational illness

Only to be left entirely alone

Under the weight of it all

With no understanding and

No remorse 

Left to fester until the

Angry, troubled little problem child

Grew up struggling to come to terms with 

The immutable fact;

The ending will only ever come from

My own hand.

Are you ready to go now?

Before the noose tightens,

Before my voice becomes cemented in

Microscopic, insignificant past,

And before the beast of your imposed imaginings

Turns his rage upon you - 

I look one last time

At the wavering image of my child-self

Shrunken under miserable existence

And reassure him

That this nightmare will too come to pass,

Thus pushing you past the threshold

To an entropic entrapment 

Of even more hopeless dreams.

I want you to remember, 

That this moment, 

In your extraordinarily vulnerable state

Of nonconsensual being,

Will be far from the worst

That you’ll ever feel. 

-