Reading Vicariously

Here he sits and writes

His schemes the dreams of dying things

Who wish forlorn to stand again

And remember what once was

It wasn’t immediate that such misery befell

Originally, he was doing well

But then came those muddling fiends

Painting targets on his insecurities

Fatal appeared the blows that marked him

Hit not like a shot, but slow and steady

The rhythmic hitting of a hammer

Bashing brain and brilliance with indifference

Breaking down, over time

The props that held him

Propped up like a marionette

In his desk chair

Pinocchio in repose

With a nose that grows

With every lie

With every truth

That pretends to be a lie

No longer swimming, nor treading

But sinking beneath cruel swells

The weight of his world

Tied to each limb with a heartbeat string

But as he fades from the buffeting waves

The voices in his mind quiet

The violence on his psyche stills

A calm embraced at the bottom of the ocean floor

Here, now, all is stripped away

Laid bare before no one but himself

Here he sits, pushing fingers into cold sand

Fine particles of infinity that care nothing of him

Here he sits, and here he writes

Apart from the parts of himself

That told him no

No good

No chance

No money

No time

No talent

No use

Far from the hammering strokes

Far beneath the heaving seas

He finds a peace

A tiny voice that says

Maybe it’s time to begin

Again