If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em

You are a fucking fraud; always have been.  A phony hologram of a human.  You're a shadow.  A nomadic phantom that belongs nowhere, yet tries to fit in everywhere.  I tried to give you a place to exist as yourself, but it wasn't good enough; not enough to make you happy, anyway.  You rejected my brand of love to the point of fucking me.  You'll never be what you claimed to be.  And I'll never be that tender and unlocked again.  Searching for something genuine is exhausting.  Nothing feels real anymore.  I haven't felt in touch for months.  I've been orbiting the stratosphere out there somewhere in the ephemeral swarth. One day bleeds into the next.  The night offers only slight solace, as the darkness settles and envelopes my thoughts as they lap and ebb in the moonlight.  I keep trying to scrub away the pain, but it just won't wash off.  My skin is raw and cracked, red and scaled, like the reptiles that got this fucked ball rolling. My mind is twisted and knotted up, it won't let go, like the gnarled, tangled roots of a mangrove, nourished by the surrounding swamp.  I can't seem to navigate any of this.  No wonder my caudate nucleus takes over much of the time, my higher functioning seems to be on Neptune somewhere, vacationing from the hurt.  I guess it just doesn't want to feel it anymore either.  There is no one on Earth to trust, perhaps it's on a one-man mission to find other forms of intelligent life.  Or at least emotionally moral ones.  Corruption, self-interest and moral bankruptcy is all that is left on this planet.  Just forgive everyone of everything, making all actions near meaningless.  Who cares if you get fucked over?  Just forgive and forget so one doesn't have to torture oneself.  Because the torturer is never an external force.  Right.  Since one cannot control others actions, it's futile to even care about them.  "You really only hurt yourself," or some such bullshit.  Fuck that.  That's horseshit that people say to someone they have fucked over to buck any sense of responsibility.  Everyone lies.  Everyone is a selfish pig bastard.  Ugh, I'm so fucking emo, man.  Just drink your troubles away, like everyone else.  Smoke yourself apathetic.  Numb yourself to everything.  Trick yourself into feigned happiness.  Because feeling things fucking sucks, punks.  People will disappoint you every God damned time.  Get with the program, fall in line, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.  I just float, barely mobile in the viscous jelly of emotion.  It once ripe with ribbons of love and romance or at least the hope thereof.  Clean and aromatic with the scent of wildflowers and wistfulness, now muddied with the stench of agony, malice and revenge; it pulls me deeper and deeper into its abyss.  The only creatures that exist at these depths are the creepy and licentious, the disgusting and deformed, those not fit for the light; the leaches, the takers.  The smash-and-grab set, eyeing all their slimy tentacles can hold.  How does one get back to the viridians and saffrons when all one can see is ink and jade.

Guy Clark- Dublin Blues