Fear is in my bones
In my step
Waiting for me in
Every gaze

I smell fear on the air
A mist that leaves
Dew on my skin
The drip is real

Escape from fear
Is unrealistic and
Unimaginable

A sorcerer’s spell
But magic is dead

The only truth is progress

Yet I regress as I fall
Further into myself

Dull-grey sword
Charlatan magician
Demon-possessed thief

I am all of these things
I feel them raging against
Sandstone walls in my chest
Demanding to be unloosed

Burst out through my fingers
Burn out my throat
Infect my eyes
Shred my eardrums
Splinter my spine

My inertia stills the fear
But it does not disappear

“Once you’ve got a task to do, it’s better to do it than live with the fear of it.”

Joe Abercrombie

The last thing I see before I go to sleep is the shadow of myself
It waits for me with splintered fists to remind me of who I am
A spinning figure trapped in between shades of the past and whispers of things yet to be
So don’t sleep, arise, the world does not stop. Neither should you
I’d rather wear my shade as a blanket and pull it around my shivering body and let it hold me when I sleep.

In the center of the storm sits the empty man
His movements placid and unhurried
An apathetic calm settles across his bone-white irises
The future is gossamer, shredded by the slightest breeze
The past is stone, obdurate and suffocating
He raises his bed-sore covered arms
Knowing that he can break this eternal inertia
With nothing more than a solitary clap
It is too late for the empty man
His skin, loose and unblemished, wears him now
It is tangled with the stitchings of his broken throne
The past is prologue. The future is prologue.
The empty man sits in the same moment
Unchanging, Unmoving, Unraveling

The shape of the world mirrors my spine
Warped and cracked from many lonely nights
I look inside to find the lie that I see in others’ eyes
The void tickles my peripheral vision
An alien seduction drawing me in
Stroking me at the dinner table as my family goes placid
My eyelids close so no one can see
The disgust and pleasure I give into

We are cruel and chaotic and finite
There is no meaning but there is an ending
You will not dream because you can not hope
Feel my weight atop you, the relentless pull of the deep
Your bonds disintegrate, your love curdles

Why do you sleep so much
It is the appetizer for death
A taste of what you wait for
The only infinite there is

I pass over the sunken field
The swamp makes me hungry
My march, implacable and unforgiving

In my center is peace but it is fleeting
I see the ground below, it seems of another realm
Not one of air and ozone, of storm and rage

I caress the zephyrs that swirl in my being
They receive them with purrs and giggles
My misty pets unafraid of the rain

I can’t hear the curses and pleas
The screams are sucked into my wind
They become a part of me and who I am

I drift further over the land
My march slows, my rage abates
Until I fade back into the air that birthed me