Lascaux Domesticus

I cannot sleep.
I listen to my own music.
Scrutinizing, listening for where
Another mark should be,
Holed up here in this deceptive space,
I call home,
Where I can wrap
Up against the wolves.
Sometimes I think of these past few years,
My self-imposed exile,
Like a kind of jail term.
“Yeah, I’ve been inside for seven years.”
Or perhaps even more ludicrous -
The idea that I might be some outreach ascetic,
About whom nobody knows.
What was it Bukowski said?
‘…There have always been
And always will be, little men in back rooms,
Ask Malcolm X, Kennedy and Christ.’
Well, I’m coming around slowly
To some kind of acceptance of this crazy life.
I’m in favour of the trees you know,
And the invisible.
But in my mind I’m torn by extremes
And unsettled
Anywhere.
I’ve begun to joke a little
That I’m a tramp, but I’m serious,
Defending myself with self deprecation
And getting the knife in first.
I cannot go on living like this,
This life I have,
Painting on the upholstery
Where I’ve slipped down behind the sofa.

And so… If I could really write.

If I could really write,
I whine,
Then I might have lived my life differently,
And that’s an uncomfortable damned equation,
Somewhere – I live in shame,
And suffer, as we do, trying hard
To avoid the pain,
Though mostly, my dumb solutions
Only drive it in deeper, like a Tick
At the end of a cigarette.

It’s all been too easy,
Means nothing,
Band-Aids
And sickness
And that,
Were it not that I am some beast,
I would be dead,
Like the runt of some litter.
But when they all go home
To pay their bills behind
Moats and castles,
I crawl back into my cardboard
Shelter and library shelves
Of bookmarked,
Well intentioned,
Half-carved invalid,
To masturbate and hide.

Has anyone seen my axiom?

The problem is, when you don’t write
With your own voice,
We creatures,
Piping the vast cosmos,
'It',
Without need of identity, fragmented here,
Each shard in need of a face,
And now fearing its vastness,
Is lost, or so we assume.

But we're lost nonetheless,
Filled with silly questions and flaky
Answers.

Ha!

The chance of life…
It’s so freakish, we suppose,
There shouldn’t be a chance of life at all.
But there’s so much space out there,
For lottery winners, that it’s not all that surprising
That something as unexpected
As a question
Is,
At all.

And 'us', wearing costumes and such,
Wailing about finding a voice of unique and separate identity,
The irony of which
For some omniscient source…
Really,
In all this confusion?
Mmmm...
Is best without voice at all.

Listing

Out there from this bow,
I can see that listing ship,
Its lifeboat ropes empty
And all the way down.

Last night you mentioned, sometime,
Of making peace with oneself;
A necessity on this globe without God.
I know that you mentioned that
With a confidence,
And that you were.

But I am, I knew then,
Listing
And in need of counteraction,
Myself.
I can feel what it feels to be out of balance…
It’s as if I’m always looking out,
Circling
And without anywhere to land.