He burnt his hand on the element
Pressing and holding his palm to the bright red hell-fire stove
‘I deserve this pain’
I deserve more!
Gasping for breath
*Tears in his eyes*

–

He burnt his hand fucking the pastors wife –
He burnt his hand in two failed marriages–
He burnt his hand leaving the religion and his family behind–

–

What made up his blood now
Stupid optimism?
A type of faith in fate
The kind you can only let go of
If your hands are busy counting pills to swallow

–

And yet suicide was not the answer
He had tried that one–
But if there was a point to his miserable life,
It was that nothing would work to escape it
God would make sure of that

–

In his destruction;
Burning choo choo train wallpaper dripping from a childhood night terror;
He was resigned that nothing could destroy him–
Such was his fate
‘A fate worse than death’

–

To love or to hate him
Seemed the inevitable dualism he encountered in everyone
Including himself

–

What had he become?
The hermit that months ago stopped searching the night for answers?
He was not the fool–
Never to be the magician!

–

And there were points he felt no fear;
Surely pain and aches and spinning nausea;
But not fear

–

He had hit the hard rock bottom
And stayed there
Playing with blocks and broken dolls
That had been tossed down the well by happy children passing him by

–

And what was there that he knew to be true?
Not much–
And in a twisted sense of wisdom
He realized that at the end of ones intense searching and practice
There was void that only a brave few ever ventured far enough to find,
And never to speak of

–

He had spent too much time in therapy and in being an anal analyst;
He knew people better than they could ever dream of ever knowing themselves;
And he loved them!
And with that he learned to stop talking and just listen–
He knew that to burst the Ego’s bubble
Was probably too much to bear for anyone than himself

–

And what pride he took that he was not an alcoholic or a drug user;
Thinking in some way that this made his pathos not so bad–
But he had might as well have been one
For his chaos was living as a dry drunk
And his insight and delusion
Were like a perpetual surreal acid trip
Or a cocaine orgy

–

He was a firebug
And dreamed of burning his world to the ground.
But the flames were not worth it;
Just a pajama and cheesecake afterthought
Just like the pills

–

And he delighted to hear
That when there’s nothing left
You have to set yourself on fire!

–

Such erotic taboo running fingers through his pubic hair
Dreaming of seventeen when some tight blonde once screwed him;

–

But all he ever managed was to keep his hand
Burning …
On the stove one night