Depression’s Hoarded Prayers

June 17, 2010

Although, I have made my home in being lost, I recognize you: You are: The homunculus of my aspirations, lost as well, squatting amid the ruins of my towering rage.

Granted, like you, my prevailing sense of self has been besieged by contretemps and coincidence; even more like you, I am enraptured by the distraction.

Our kind  … are dazzled by broken bits of the approving sun. Amassing solar shards the way bower birds shore glinting baubles, I’ve witnessed you bartering with penurious angels for a glimpse of the totality that caused their fall.

(What we won’t do for the buzz provided by primal grace. Although we carry Eden within us … knowing it is as provisional as paradise.)

Your need for recognition leaves you exhausted: At day’s end, you collapse upon sweat-sodden sheets, dreaming of your shit-dust empire … built from hoarded, moldering triumphs, the ash of incantatory wit, and the atrophied promises you made to your future self.

Your mind — such as it is — is an inhuman reflection cast by daemonic mirrors: You mistake the welter of fragmented drives and desires for the deathless dreams of numinous seeds.

Come morning, you negotiate your existence amid a city of visionary vermin and indifferent right angles; you drag your putrefying hopes down to the banks of the Eternity’s burning river. There, you turn, face east, and mutter your desperate prayer of entitlement to the distracted dawn.

A filthy breeze rises from the river in reply.

Posted in Essays