Working Through Some Stuff

Part 1: Darkness

I lie alone in the darkness,

Cold seeping into my carcass,

Tethered here from dawn to dusk,

A wilting, rotting empty husk,

In exile tortured and penitent although irrelevant,

Returning from this place would emerge a reluctant revenant,

I linger in Plato's cave,

Enshrouded by the darkness that I crave,

Needing to be here just a little longer,

This place perceivably making me stronger,

For who would I be..... and what would others see?

Without this insidious darkness teaching me,

I'm scared but... I want to know this,

Staring till I can begin to perceive in soft focus,

That reveals years of festering wounds,

Ribs protruding, soiled and bruised,

I don't like this grotesque thing I see,

How could I do this..... to me?

As I start to regain my vision,

I make it my mission to escape,

But it feels fake, thin like a rusty rake,

my strength once again fades like a cheap disguise

I yearn for shade.....I hate these lidless eyes!

I don't like the light it shifts my sight,

Proves I was not right,

I fought needless battles in vain,

I sacrificed too much of myself and now lie here full of shame,

So I dust off an old question from a long forgotten shelf

How could others like me, when I don't like myself?

I haunted my home,

cast out all I had known,

That's how I have grown,

Decrepit, grizzled and bitter,

Making everything shitter,

Through my indulgent self-inflicted pain,

But I now have acquired a compulsion to overcome this revulsion,

To use my new found sight, even if its slight,

To see what others seem to find so easily,

The good that I've hidden inside of me.