Crib Death

A prisoner
Of all I have ever dreamed
Could be reality for me,
I suffered under pretense
That love still mattered.
Nothing could be
Further from the truth.

Sighs escape
Such quivering nights
And days linger hopelessly,
Hung as chandeliers,
Over a table,
Offering but
A lifetime of misgivings.

It seems I have always had too much on my plate...

What could I ever do
To regain my own heart?
Where could I not tread
That the shards of fear
Wouldn't again pierce
My once-tender passions?

Could it ever be enough
Just to have
My piece of mind?
Or would I better be,
If peace rested deep
Beneath my own
Contempt's shadows?

It seems I have always had too much on my plate,
And now must gorge myself on sorrows until
I am sickened at my own image...

If possible to know,
Surely angels, too,
Forsake me now.
As I have little
Left in me to pray
Beyond an answer.

And brittle,
Though, the bars, I whittle
With bared fangs
Of self-hatred,
Fragile freedom would
Be nothing more
Than a life-sentence of pain.

The longest shadows
Seem to gain
Such momentum towards
A death of my spirit
And yet, to know they come,
As the last rays of hope
Leave my skies,
Somehow comforts me greatly.

It seems I have always had too much on my plate,
And still fate serves me more helpings of hindsight until
I cup my hands to the sides of my world,
To block out the sun...

In admittance
To my own guilt
In creating
This four-walled hell
In my world,
I ready my dying soul
To embrace the tomorrow
That may never
Be mine again.

For as the silver-soft disk
Fills my only portal to life,
To spray a fine mist of feeling
Upon the dusky floors of my prison,
The silhouette of a warden
Is caught in my mind,

And tears of my eyes,
in their haste to leave me
as rats scatter
From a sinking vessel,
Crash to the silt-laden concerns
I once held

If care were
A possession of mine,
Perhaps I could ask
For audience with the judge,
And beg constructive eviction
Be imposed,
For I am surely unfit
For hope to live
Inside me any longer.

It seems I have always had too much on my plate,
And yet self-laothing is fed me in finger sandwiches until,
I cry to wash down the filth and stench with my own blood...

And the smoke-filled notions
That this is all in jest
Comes to me
Quite easily,
Perhaps just so
I can laugh
At the true pathetic qualities
Of my existence.

There shall be
No bargaining chips to cast
As the tendriled shadows
Crawl the table
In this dead-man's
Game of chance.

And nothing short of sacrilege
Shall be spilled
From my hand...

It seems I have always had too much on my plate,
But I shall swallow this odious me...

For as I say,
I am guilty...
Of treason
To my heart and mind,
And this cruel validation
That greets me now
Shall forever be my penitence.