Don’t Let Me Down

Another verse, on my Freudian psychoanalysis steez. This was originally titled: “Ha! (Mentally) Sicker Than Your Average.” So there’s that. Anyway:

 

 

“sit back, relax, don’t writhe and fidget
we gotta sink deeper to find why you did it…”

everything’s white.
Except a dot resting dormant to the right of me
off in the distance, I cautiously squint to try and see.
A haze of color vapors upward when I slide my feet –
low rumbling. The dot begins to grow as white retreats.

Each step’s vertiginous, am I walking or falling towards it?
(Darkness engorges)
rumbling louder til a cavernous entrance
materializes.
I creep to the side to an unfolding ladder descending.

at the bottom of it: two armed-guards
distorted reflections, funhouse versions of me in nuanced garb.
“Halt! What do you want?”
startled, I begged my speech to expire
they’d been here a while – fatigued proof of feet grooves showed each move was tired.
Up close they were see-through, I could peer to the pyres behind them in airy heaps – “This is where you keep your fears and desires.”

“We’re not supposed to let you down here,” they echoed in chorus
but when they stepped up towards me it rendered them formless.
“Your threats are all worthless, let me go!” I demanded
Eliciting snickers – “You don’t understand it.”
“Truth is cancer, we’re here to protect you from it –
come see – if you think you possess the stomach.”
The first one showed me my desires, but before I could ask him
what everything meant, he already Formed a Reaction.

The corner was flashing with dreams from the past:
morbid attractions, friends clinking their glass.
Adolescent me, peaking a glance at my mother undressing,
and a sequence of acts trying to gain other’s acceptance.
“It’s something depressing, what your heart gravitated to.
Think of ALL the things you didn’t have the talent to pursue.
I make things manageable for you, a crucial part of your pride
You’re bound to fail, I don’t know why you bothered to try.”

I felt a hotness arise within, but before I could respond
I found myself on the black shore of a sordid little pond.
“Incorrigible fraud,” the second guard barbed as he appeared,
“you have to dive down for the water to be clear.
If you’re gargling your fears and you need some protection
then don’t dive – I’m close by to be your Projection.”
I breached it in seconds. Eyes burned from the depth.
But the guard lied! The dark tide grew murkier yet.
The pressure burdened my chest, panic spiraled inside of me –
till it burst out around me through the waves of a stifled scream.

Pictures of childhood. Tormented with lies and regrets.
Paralyzed. Suspended in a torrent of what I’ve tried to forget.
Everyone laughing at me: surrounded, naked and shoved
too much a failure for love, but my biggest fear:
becoming what I was capable of.

Kept swimming. Lungs stinging. Crude shape. Escape hatch!
We tried to warn you, but my fate was too late to take back.
A few cranks and waves crashed, swallowing swiftly;
vortex of my fears, desires, and defenses – I brought it all with me.

The other side. Two different men. Stopped atop the horn of a staircase
that fell deep into a blank abyss; darkness also worn on their face.
Shadows stretched, lurking behind them. Panicked, I couldn’t stare straight
silhouettes of specters illumined a path I wouldn’t dare take.

I won’t let you down, the first appealed the same –
like before, when I confronted him, the less real he became.

People say the brain is controlled by outer stimulus,
but those pictures are tricksters, so I filter out the images.
Think of this – was it your fault your single mom was a whore?
Did you deserve to grow up in a place so dishonest and poor?
Were your promises born out of impossible lies?
Does your conscience mean more than old inaudible cries?
All of those lives down there, they don’t know what it’s like –

The second man interrupted, the ghost of my psyche:

Ignorance is bliss, should’ve enjoyed it while it lasted
No need to rationalize – if you bury it, it never happened.

The dirty, painful, liberating Truth – down those stairs it existed
Instead of asking, I demanded, “Don’t let me down…
…bury me with it.”