I have thrust through days and weeks with a bayonet,
Writing notes from my underground with fading ink.
I have stuttered in a half step.
With the mouse, brooding in a dark hole, sitting in shadow dust, I have
walked.
I have sliced away with a razor blade at hours, bleeding myself to death,
All white in the face, and numb,
Hiding behind a man;
Gazing lazily at something else.
Stuffing silver-sharp wool into my brain.
Out of my head! you emperor of self, big man, Ubermensch.
Your pounding feet and
Eye like the orb of the sun.
You are the black bacterium that crept through my pupil on spiders’ legs,
And I hear you whisper lies to me inside my head
Like worms that I have let in.
Now, the wall that you have been slowly building for more than a year,
So slowly that I have failed to notice it bind my arms, and legs,
Has borne a crack, and through it I regard myself and
I come to find I have forgotten who I am.
I want to fall back to sleep, forget and forget.
But last time--and the time before--
That I tried to drug myself to sleep,
I wanted nothing more than to take a hammer to my head and claw you out,
OUT! OUT!
The gravity of dark is great, but I am not ready to resign myself to sleep.
It will take time, I’m afraid, but I will (I must) find a way to wake,
And repair my heart,
From spilling cerise years upon my chest,
And drive you, who spreads madness through my mind,
From out my head.