With no one beside you

 

With no one beside you there’s no one to apply the brakes

 

When life without physical contact, emotional support,

 

Becomes untenable

 

When pressure drives you into a pretend world

 

Full of pleasurable (?) distractions

 

That take you away from what you are

 

Who you have to be

 

What it is that threatens you.

 

 

 

A fine balance.

 

That between accepting worries

 

And dispelling them to prevent stagnation and inaction

 

To prevent dwelling on life’s darkness and what you don’t possess

 

Is anything worth it?

 

You decide

 

 

 

In those moments of contemplative pause

 

Memories stir and awaken with every smell,

 

Every sight

 

Every lingering touch

 

As the mind seeks to return to a time when it was behind walls

 

When the world was outside

 

And it was on the inside.

 

Safe

 

Each memory now becomes painful

 

I can’t go back there

 

Once passed it can never be recreated

 

The time, the feeling, the innocence

 

 

 

Is it only to continue functioning that I convince myself that I am in a better place now?

 

That being aware, with the aid of intellectual x-ray,

 

I can now see through, inside and behind everything.

 

Expose all that I see.

 

The eyes can lie

 

Flatter

 

But if you question your eyes,

 

You see more than you are supposed to

 

 

 

Yet,

 

What is it worth?

 

To see through everything

 

It’s too dark for me

 

I hoped for more

 

We tell ourselves there is more

 

Life is but a track on which are wagons listlessly bump and grind and slide along

 

Towards the end of the line

 

You can only go where the track takes you

 

Only see what it permits you to see

 

 

 

Somehow I feel I have become decoupled

 

Left the train

 

The happy

 

Ignorant

 

Naïve

 

Train

 

That whistles along through stations with attractive advertising

 

Adding more passengers to it’s burgeoning, creaking,

 

Well painted, but pallid coaches.

 

 

At the junction

 

The one I arrived at

 

Soon after decoupling

 

Depression

 

Takes me through too many tunnels

 

On entering each tunnel

 

The eyes

Adjust

 

The dark tunnels

 

Contain so much

 

There’s a firm overseeing beauty in its structure

 

Hidden behind the detritus

 

It will remain there long after the cold winds blow the rest away

 

 

These tunnels are punctuated

 

By searing sunlight

That dazzles me

 

I know that which it illuminates

 

Is a pristine and pure beauty

 

Devoid of humans

 

Time prevents my eyes from adjusting in time to recognise and understand this place

 

As another tunnel is forced upon me

 

Once more I am forced to find beauty amidst the darkness.

 

 

 

Hope is one equation

 

That appears to have no solution

 

No place

 

Whilst undeniably occupying a position

 

Core

 

I dare not observe hope

 

It may collapse it

 

To deny it

 

Collapses life

 

 

 

Where now?

 

I feel the best I had to offer,

 

And life in return,

 

Is behind me and sealed into time

 

 

 

I feel

 

My mind is not as sharp

 

My body not as agile

 

My confidence intertwined with the sands of time

 

Each grain drops painfully away from me

 

Out of reach

 

Unstoppable

 

Merciless

 

Certain

 

Certain to end

 

 

 

I’ve screwed up

 

Forgoing the eloquent representation

 

Of my situation

 

I have lost

 

And I am so

 

 

 

Wander alone?

 

Further and further with no questioning from outside

 

Then how will I know if it’s worth wandering

 

It’s amazing how no voice behind, beside

 

Leads us into such uncertainty

 

Am I being me?

 

Am I being true?

 

No is going to tell me.

 

 

 

I have wandered alone so, too long

 

Away

 

How can I find my way back if

 

I am lost

 

 

 

I wish for company

 

For trust and love

 

For lust

 

For someone I can care

 

For some belonging

 

 

 

 

How many people have drifted passed me

 

How many have I let go

 

How many

 

Will I never know?

 

I’m too scared to admit

 

I’m scared life will be over soon

 

And I will be alone

 

And still trapped in a tunnel

 

Lying amongst the rubbish of life

 

Dreaming of the gentle sun

 

Smiling upon nature’s incredible,

 

Suffering

 

Beauty.

 

 

At least soon,

 

I will rejoin nature

 

My carbon donor card ready at my side

 

My collected thoughts returned to the world from which I borrowed them

 

 

The last, lingering thought,

 

I’m sure

 

Will be

 

Sorry to the world

 

For I could have done more for you

 

And then one last tunnel

 

Pure black,

 

Deathly cold

 

Which renders all what you saw outside meaningless and inconsequential.

 

 

this beautiful photo is from Charon (many thanks)