God bless…
The hellfire that spit me,
The demons that can’t quit me.
My DNA’s so shifty
That my genes don’t even fit me.
I take more time, than Time permits me.
I know it’s judgement will never acquit me.
But all the arrows it fires to split me,
I’ve pierced myself with, a time or fifty.
My stomach strikes up to greet me
In a symphony of uneasy,
Burns through any chance to relieve me
And all my fortune cookies, read “Eat me.”
I feel the rush of a frantic entreaty
From that nervous fire that breathes me,
spits my life story out as graffiti,
In penmanship sure to misread me.
God bless…
The fate that tries to grift me,
The reality that bit me.
My regrets meet in committee,
Their voices can’t always convince me.
Lately, patience runs out so quickly
that its breeze spins me dizzy,
And my mind has been so drifting,
that my dreams no longer fit me.
Is this rhyme imposed artificially?
Is the meter I’m on too constricting?
Thoughts circle answers but miss me,
collide off themselves contradicting.
They say everything happens for a reason.
They don’t say it, when it happens to them.
I’m falling off my rhythm again
Sleep starved eyelids scratching at the ceiling.
I try to spin it positive,
but thoughts have their own gravity.
And it’s hard to wrap my head around
this being where I’m supposed to be
when nothing here seems comforting.
And words, my only medication,
want war with my situation,
but fighting it just leads to more suffering.
So, is letting go my only safety?
No control has ever saved me
From this self-inflicted destiny.
I know this path will help me,
so why isn’t trusting it easy?
I repeat it to myself,
but until I can breathe it,
I don’t believe me.
I own this moment only, as it owns me
and even that overstates my agency.
I hold only this breath that sustains me,
and it’s best not to grip it too tightly.
I feel the constant pull to distract me,
creating constant need to realign me,
to steer into the skid that spins me,
when instinct swerves hard to derail me.
It’s ok that this fits so uncomfortably
If I can let it, it will eventually guide me
To the moment my breath slows so calmly,
that my screams, no longer fit me.
I exhale them controlled and chilly
over the embers that used to possess me.
I’m in the only place I can be,
I’ll take this peace, however uneasy.
Steer into the Skid © Mike Chernoff– 6/17/23
From the collection Steer into the Skid
Chernoff Writing.com 