LONG FORGOTTEN MISERY
by Jon Benham
Long forgotten misery.
They say,
control, control,
condone, condone.
Maybe then, your progress
will have been shown.
Why must the view of window pane
be to blame for our struggle?
When it is
the walls who beg to differ.
And, here we stand, and
for grandeur’s sake, we reluctantly ignore
what is beyond us.
Long forgotten misery.
Sacrifice your wounds.
It is for the greater good!
Which of
us
will speak so vibrantly that
it must be in a tongue spitting
out nonsense so violently?
I thought that is why we are here.
I thought.
I think it is time
to disrupt flows of ideas,
to,
procrastinate,
in other words.
Long forgotten misery.
It has been a specter for too long.
But,
how long will we long for it?
The.
Idea.
Of.
You.
The soul,
reminds me of you.
The savior.
The charlatan.
We’ll be back, in time.
On my own, or so they say,
begging for mercy from the catharsis bestowed on me
by vapid strangers who-
No.
They are strangers who belong nowhere near
these corridors.
They belong beyond the window,
but I hear them through the walls!
Long forgotten misery.
What is left to comprehend?
What must we do?
Or, is the real question,
what must we say???
I can’t even sleep,
without you removing my spine
and then audaciously ask me to walk the next
morning!
The misery is mourning.
The clouds beyond us are pouring,
and we dealt with drowning in the sun!
No, no.
No.
Gratitude is near.
Pleasantries exchanged.
Lies have been engaged.
You care?
Then why do you just sit back and stare?
I’m going the fuck home.
Tarnished by energy getting mauled by time,
I conceptualize the sound of my breath.
Invincible, as it seems to the naked eye,
it subsides to the agony of what I hear.
Speeds quivering.
Silence.
Speeds quiering.
Silence.
Injustice, is all when breath struggles
to find its innocuous provider.
Who are you running from?
My breath cuts short.
What is it that you fear?
We are all afraid, we are all afraid.
I find, justice is solidarity.
The punishment of trial and error.
The illusion,
being, which one are you?
Hide alone, feel disconnected.
Hide from yourself, be disconnected.
Return to the breath, as it begs,
for your admiration.
Your attention.
You tell yourself time after time,
run.
The people will just laugh,
but,
run.
They want to see ya dance, boy.
They want to see ya play, boy.
Your breath lies dormant.
You hope that it will remain that way
until eyes close and you can finally,
grasp,
an escape.
But, you always run.
Hide from them.
Hide from them.
What will they think when they
find you, though?
They will find you odd.
Odd.
You run.
They find you weak.
Weak.
You beg for mercy.
And they give it to you.
But, we must never forget,
who was the one who asked for it?
I am stuck in between the ceiling,
and the ground.
About the Author:
Art is my everything…
I was born in 1996, and, by 1999, my life was already upside down. I was sexually assaulted by my babysitter as a three-year-old, destroying all hope for a normal life almost immediately. I struggled in school, was bullied to the extent that I was assaulted again in 8th grade in front of an entire class of laughing children. I was ostracized to no end. Now, years later, I suffer from Bipolar 1 Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. These control my life. Art is my everything. It is the one thing that keeps me outside of the walls I feel closing in. I have been published several times in the past year for fiction and poetry.