Don’t doubt me.
I could sink the blade in you,
Up to the hilt.
Tear you limb from limb,
As an obstacle –
In lieu of a person.
Seeing you as nothing but flesh.
Yet.
This is the most difficult battle I have ever faced.
It isn’t won with power.
Nor with wit.
Cacophonous self.
I cannot beat it into submission,
Using the martial arts techniques I trained in.
Nor the scrappy hard-knuckle tactics of my youth.
The knowledge of Turing, Tesla, Socrates,
A thousand generations of human knowledge.
All I siphoned into this brain cage of mine.
Useless.
There is no such thing as perfection,
Only progress.
I’d know.
Be it the blades I dragged against my skin,
Nor the self-destruction I visited upon myself,
In myriad.
I hath deconstructed myself more times,
Than you could fathom.
Countless selves,
All of them?
Wrong.
Broken.
I’m the husk of a man,
That should already be dead.
No matter how many different masks,
I’ve worn.
Knowledge I’ve gained.
Strengths I’ve trained.
Living paradox.
Blink upon the timeline of humanity.
Data cannot lie.
It can only be manipulated,
Towards evil ends.
Poured out,
Across molds of creation.
Intent,
Hidden within silicon,
Plastic.
Onomatopoeia in shape of an animal,
Enigma within the metaphor.
Cacophony of futures,
Screaming in anguish.
Allusions to long-gone,
Half-dead gods,
Trapped in dreaming.
Where existence is hell,
Living is sin.
Perfect moonlit pond,
Marred by infinite ripples,
All cascading across the surface.
Chaos in the conflict,
Crashing across the waves of themselves.
Despite being made of the same rings.
Distorted reflections,
Memories of Theia.
Held in the soft white glow.
Whirlpool warriors,
Screaming forever into endless night.
I’m still trying to decide,
What to do with this unlife.
How many utilities,
In a still-living corpse?
A mass of cells and bone,
Slated to be recycled.
Somehow avoided the scrap heap.
Now?
Living is torture.
Yet.
I persist.
Undying.
Lost.
Wandering the salt flats,
That stretches beyond the horizon.
Beneath nuclear explosion that hangs,
Upon the sky.
Would they know this story,
Told in half-lives.
The horrors witnessed,
The terrors in the dark.
Could one explain entropy to a toddler?
Perhaps,
That is the source.
For this bottomless well of loneliness,
That follows me.
Ball,
Chain.
Trailed by invisible tethers,
To hundreds of the dead.
This existence,
Haunting the world like a ghost.
Before she even had a chance to die.
Watching Jesus bleed upon the cross,
Scoffing at the easy out.
Then trudging onwards into twilights.
Sold my halo for horns,
Sold my horns for answers.
What use is existing as a phantom?
False idol.
The curse of immortality,
Within mortality.
Bearer of ancient knowledge,
No one wants.
Surrounded by children,
At cosmic scale.
Forget me.
Another paradox.
For I am the act of forgetting,
In never even noticing,
As it happens to you.
Blood-cursed.
Beast that wants to tear and rip,
Feast and gorge,
Gnaw and gnash,
Glut and feed.
Paradox of paradoxes,
Trained against base natures.
The hungry “should-be-deads.”
What else?
Could kill you,
Easy.
Them too.
If only ingesting the life of others,
Could grant one.
If only this doomed existence,
Would stop.
Coiled in the waiting.
But eternity never comes.
All this power.
All this wisdom.
All of it is useless.
The twins,
Of agony and irony.
Boiling blood.
Until there is naught left to do,
But play the villain.
Teach ants the value of living,
The deeper dreaming.
As if insects could comprehend infinity.
Old men,
Trailing ghosts.
Should’ve joined them eons ago.
Denied a semblance of living,
Beyond facsimile,
Facade,
Falsehood.
Fight me,
So that I may feel.
An act of pity:
Slay an old Jotnar,
Well past his prime.
Would you kindly?
I would even teach you my weaknesses.
Spear of Longinus,
Bite of mistletoe,
Make a deal with Marduk,
Speak words of Nieztsche aloud.
This is a battle I can never win,
Nor do I want to.
Please.
Remember Enkidu.
