Riddle Definition

Hate I my God, be he He or but something else ununderstandable–unintelligible–

Whatever my maker, this poem is my pronouncement to that creating deity

That I denounce the passion bid me pour out like pitch upon an ivory floor.

Here lies my little prologue done, death upon me or in my doom,

Then engrave my epitaph as this prologue and down into the depths of dirt

I’ll dive without rage, but peace and the denial of any envy or injustice undone,

Yet while my pen dallies on, in poor condition or in prime, on I must write

To define my denouncement: while preachers from their pulpit glorify

What has built their bodies and their brains, now I, that deity do defame:

~~~~~~~~~~~

1.

I feel the breath gasp out like wisps and hoarse echoes of pained lungs,

Exhaustion!!

How tired and twisted, turned round to where I am but plates and segments

Whirled about in the chaos of a screeching hurricane, like houses moaning

As the wood once natural in form now shaped for structured solidity splinter

Into shards–Nature’s wrathful needles whipping and lashing

Through the rising Earth as rubble, rock and pebble, are hurled about.

Exhaustion!!

The mind dulls like the blade on some block–chopping, chopping–

Letting the head roll away and perception goes with its tumble

Towards some precipice whose bottom is unknown. But why?!

Why can not I hold onto my mind when it is all that I possess?

Exhaustion….

My heart drives on like a boulder building momentum as it gathers

Bracken, bilge, and the last breaths of my broken bones,

Forcing them back from the peak and pushing them towards the edge,

But why? Why?

Why exhaustion….what makes me see myself in the mirror

As the gasping fish out of the water, white and pale blue,

Coughing fiercely as the fires burn in me and my eyes.

2.

As the bloodshot veins grow and burst out and mute my irises

And burn me as hot tears pour like I’m boiling inside

Like Hell has begun within the chasms of my chest,

Ripping forth with Beelzebubic breaths, bombastic breaths.

Bolting across the heavens like lightning–lancing, writhing

Like snakes, worms, the brethren of the bowel’s beasts,

But why? Why the tempests?

Exhaustion….

This body has weathered one full score and months more,

Yet many bodies have weathered more–score and score,

But this is not the point, what is?

The point long lost in the ocean waves and fog and mist

Has made miss and miss and miss,

The lighthouse light is off and I’m alone

With shredded sails and broken keel,

No food or warmth or allied face,

Just me alone upon the sea,

With worm-like lightning called out to ride

Across the barely blackened sky, the empty sky.

So that I am caught in this raging wave, no land here

Where once it was, for all of it is gone–

For the avalanche has cast the titan cliffs into the sea

And deep they went where my eyes and heart do not go

So that the bilge and sand rolls up and clouds the sea

So that it cannot reflect the storm but does with accuracy,

Haunting mesmeric accuracy as the lightning races across the sky

Its reflections in my bloodshot eyes so that I in my eyes

Feel those clouds severed by their heads by what and why?

Exhaustion….

3.

For exhaustion is all around me and I see it like a break

In the clouds, a horizon of periwinkles and unexciting blues and pales,

Sad, sad is that future, yet safe, safe is that future–

For in it is exhaustion….and I’m afraid of that kind….

The kind–placid face and top half showing with

The smell of pine and the best suit ghosts can buy and a dolled up face–

The kind–rocking on a porch and staring at trees in symmetry

And working, reworking as if ideas grew more poignant

Rather than dulling the ignorant passion, the ignorant rage

That calls from hollow chambers in the hearts of withered man,

Exhaustion…..

It kills me and grasps my ribs and pulls them apart

Like the Hairy Ape that has so many symbols, one is me,

It rips the cage apart only to die within it

When it was already outside.

But it is exhaustion in and out, and death is but a stop in breath,

A moment when exhaustion finally wins and boats reach their horizons,

And yet….and yet…..

The scattered trees, the rolling rocks, the shreds of sails,

The sparse winds wailing, the corpse, the cage, the passion and the rage,

Hell and lightning, earth wind, and air, the chopping block

With bilge and bracken, gasping fish and the empty lighthouse

All are but things, things and names that give definitions that are nothing

More than other words and definitions as so all these images

Created by these words are just words and no images, but we have

Them, so what are words but worthless and all I have

Are words and what I need is a mirror but it doesn’t work, for

There is nothing I can do and I try and I try and I try

Like bells always ringing I repeat and struggle but make the same sound

And don’t know how to say I love and need.

Just the image and the words, no emotion, no way to create

Anymore then several pages of exhaustion.

But why?

4.

But why?

But what?

Exhaustion…..

I know not where to end with this,

On and on I’m driven, on and on I go,

Hungry, sick, tired, desperate,

Like an angel falling through the scene,

Catching at the clouds with scrambling hands,

But I’m no angel, no angel.

For angels have wings and I only sink,

And who am I?

And why?

Exhaustion…..

Wrists hurt, pencils snap, fingers burn

And, in their turn, they ally with me for they’re me–

Pieces of me, and in pieces I am,

For I want something that I cannot have

And do not understand but yet I have

The hope that if I drive on, and I have

To drive on I may find my sanity and have

At last the chance to stand and have

My voice heard and the hands I have

Have her hands–their eyes I’ll have

As they look up to me and then,

Finally….

I can breathe in and exhaustion

Will be but a word again.