mahiwaga

writhing with frustration
aching with desire
wrestling with indecision
still as a mountain top looming over the City

madness like electricity
like gouts and bursts of searing fire burning through my nerves
like flashes of blinding lightning tearing through the evening sky
the soul shudders, the mind recoils
sends pinprick shivers up and down my spine
as I stare eyes open
seeing nothing
but the darkness in this squalid, fetid tenement

hurls me out of my dreams
jolts me out of my sleep
and maybe it was just the earth groaning
sliding, thrusting a millimeter east
a millimeter skyward
or the rumbling of a well-laden Mack truck
careening down the claustrophobic street
negotiating the sudden gusts of wind
leaving behind a sonic wake
like the roaring of a transient waterfall
or a supersonic burst of air
a shockwave as the fighter jets scramble
and the stealth bombers deploy

In this stillness, this sloth, languishing in indecision
the soul quivers, thrashes
locked within this dilapidated body gone to pot
worn down and encumbered
by 100 kilos of slow, torpid flesh
and all decisions look wrong

It’s not a question of wrong and right.
It’s a question of wrong and very wrong.

All paths lead out into the darkness
into the fog of war
into the foam of quantum uncertainty

it’s not so much the sense of barrelling down the freeway
at 200 km/h, tied down in a straitjacket, sitting bitch in the backseat
otherwise unrestrained, with no one at the wheel

it’s that wriggling/shivery feeling at the back of your head
wondering how you ended up here in the first place
knowing that the past is irrevocable
but the future is going to be damned fucking short
and even triumph become tragedy

It’s just the gnawing hunger in your belly
and the frantic urgency of basic bodily functions

You’re trying to be still, but the nerves jangle
the muscles spasm
each breath drawing down the sharpness of knives
aerosolized glass shards lacerating your airways
there is no relief until the end
and is that all you’re waiting for?

Even a nuclear bomb up my ass
might fail to move my sad sack, bloated body off of this chair
stuck stupid and slack-jawed, gaping at this screen
(to filter through reality
like stripped shorn pantyhouse in front of a sewage drain
leaving the cigarette butts and used condoms to wallow
in that sepulcher of corrugated metal and chemical despair
letting the fecophilic micro-organisms,
the rich culture medium of turd
float out in the cold of the unforgiving sea)

the words come
like vomiting up a champagne flute
after eating it shard by shard
after someone had taken a sledgehammer to your gut
it’s almost as bad as the Turkish prison trick
where they jam a glass stirring rod into your pee hole
and smash your dick with a ball peen hammer
herpes and chlamydia ain’t got nothing on that sort of pain

and the words are just like pus dripping down
like spit and mucus, the dried crust of tears
and clotted blood
there is so much blood

this despair too much like the flu
and every muscle aches, every move spews forth fire into your flesh
or acid
etching away through your flesh
carving out some cryptic message in your bones
melting, searing, cooking your heart

still

and silent

Better lucky than good.