My Comfort

"We are the music makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams; —

World-losers and world-forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers

Of the world for ever, it seems."

- Ode, Arthur O'Shaughnessy

The words once read with starstruck awe,

Now live in my mind rent free with haunting gall.

Here one moment and gone in the next,

I live exclusively best in my head.

One foot in, and the other out,

Reality for me is an optional door,

A place I can sometimes go,

To try and relieve the burnout.

But oh does it come,

With an overbearing force,

The call of the wild:

Imagination; creativity; inspiration.

Like a leaf in the wind,

I am not in control of

When I stay or when I go.

And in the end, I kind of know

That comfort for me

Is found in the chaos:

Down dark empty streets,

Sitting by those desolate streams.

Scraping the heavens

Of my forlorn mind,

Getting lost in the noise

And slipping through time.

I am a ghost:

Neither here, nor there.

I permeate through life,

Wearing a blank stare.

I exist, permanently, between worlds,

Those that exist in me,

And those that exist without.

So, forgive me if seem tuned out.

I am a pawn,

For those higher things,

That turn the nobs:

The puppet masters and gods.

They control me,

Much like they do you,

The difference being,

The eyes we see through.

I see the strings,

And bow my head,

And ever-presently know,

That I am ultimately dead.

A walking, waking, seeing corpse,

Someone that will stain the course.

A destiny already wrought in stone.

I tread through reality...

Always alone.