Shame

Shame

I am so ashamed of myself,

I feel I have failed more than I can ever repair.

Each step forward I’ve slipped two steps back:

Sisyphus 

I cry in despair.

I am a drug addict, alcoholic,outcast 

I have judged and despised.

I’ve done horrible things sexually,

My very soul is dirty

My armpits stink

Or so the tv tells me.

I shit and cannot get clean

Shower and scrub and still there are germs.

Memories haunt my sleep

My mind is a fragmented tattered thing

His voice haunts.  

His dying words reverberate. 

It is just utter loneliness I know.

All is broken mirrors, scraping glass, and rage.

In this cage of passion and begging

I am broken. 

I  can not rise up again.

My knuckles drag when I walk. 

I cannot shave away the hair that grows again

The very nostril hair suffocates.

Plucking, plucking, plucked.

Mostly I just cry

And old persons sobs.

The shameful sounds.

Sometimes even my smile betrays my  gloom

I am dying too. 

And I have fall so far short of what I could have been

So many defeats, 

So many broken promises.

Bruised and scorned I have grown sullen. 

I am not made of sturdy stuff.

It takes all I have to survive

Breathing is hard

The constant effort to suck in, breathe out.

I am afraid to go out.

Each day I shudder at existence. 

I fear to face another threat

So unready am I to die

Though I feel I’ve died a countless death.

So unprepared I’ve been this life

I carry a thousands wounds.

I could have smiled but I frowned instead.

When I should have celebrated I felt self pity instead.

I am a narcissist, smegma, breast cheese, unkempt.

I have so much thought of me when I should have thought of you

I have been so shallow unworthy and unforgiving

I am a worm who would have been a king

I lacked some subtle sense

Some kindness

That which I could not know but for something.

I”m not quite human.

I am unloved in my unloving

I am untouched in my sterile retreat 

I am a loser, really.

Ashamed.

And you say there is hope with faith.

She said she could love me always.

He said he’d be there in the darkness.

I made such promises too.

But in the abyss of abysses. 

There were only the screams and silence

I am a silliness of blood and flesh,

Mere nonsense before my pride of place,

A repetition and repugnance

I am a reeling, hurling twirling bits of fluff

Electrons and neutrons dancing carelessly, wildly,

Exploding synapses and automation.

What should have been in charge was never fully there

I was absent when I needed most to be present

I haven’t even hid it well.

There are lines upon my face that tell it all. 

There are scars of  worry and fear

I can not hide my face forever

It will one day be a death mask, corrugated.

I am like a doe on the road, eyes wide,

Lost in this world of ever increasing speed and action.

There has never been time. 

What I had I squandered.

I am constantly late

Turning from the terror of one moment

To face the next with equal unpreparedness.

‘

I am praying, I am kneeling, I am prostrate with love and fear

I am calling out for solace, begging another minute,  another day

While all about me there are dying, and my turn is coming

I play cat and mouse

Suicides and torture.

I am long past believing there is anywhere or any when better.

No longer look to pills or guns or ropes to free me

They offered less than lingerie and poetry.

A beast slouches towards Bethlehem 

And I just carry on.

This child stillborn.

Remembering the abortion she gave me.

And all the nights she did drugs

And cried for her mother

Wanting me to be some kind of vagina or a breast.

I’ve never known what people wanted of me 

And in the end they were always disappointed.

There’s such a calling for God and perfection

I am neither.

I am waiting myself in terror for the footsteps to find me

Hiding under sheets and under beds

I am curled up in my own fetal position.

I can not close my eyes more tightly

I cannot shut out the sounds with my hands any longer.

You will find me in your time.

Death will be like love they say,

As if this would be of use to me 

I ,so unlucky in love.

So unloving and unloved

Oh, I was loved.

I was loved beyond my wildest dreams

But I was born defective

I lacked that part.

And you said I was a waste

Condemned me naked

When I gave all I knew

Said all I could.

Tried and failed and failed.

Always it was my fault.

I have always been to blame

I am to blame

I am ashamed.

When the lights came on the friends scattered like cockroaches.

It was always me.

Without me there would be good

Without me there would be grace.

Without me there would be you.

You were always good

And I was always……

That which is not good.

I want no more illusion

No more opening chess gambits 

No gimmicks and no more magic. 

You were so many people

So beautiful and innoscent

So impossibly perfect

So untouchable.

I climbed so many peaks

Just to look upon your feet

Just to kiss your painted toe.

Before I fell again into the deep

Now I can’t get clean
I can’t touch the places that hurt

Where knots of muscle and bone

Bend my back and stab me again and again.

Pain is my reminder of failure.

I am no Atlas.

I could not hold your world on my shoulders,

I can not lift us up again.

I can not carry you another step.
I believed in our dishonesty

I faltered over and over again.

I was not the man I could have been.

I had such promise,

So many gifts,

Such well wishers

And was loved,

And trained,

And supported,

All I had to do was soldier on,

But I faltered and broke.

Finally, I ran

I am a coward.

I hid in lies. 

I cheated myself 

When I did not cheat you.

There is no use in confession,

There is no amount of words that could undo

The hurt I caused.
I have been so rough and manlike.

So now I wallow in shame

I am so ashamed

I am beatten, bruised, reeling from all the names

You’ve called me and I have called myself

Bezelbub, satan, husband, son, devil, man and shit.

I am bewildered.

I am lost.

I am confused,

I can’t go on,

I wake in the night again.

My dreams reject me.

I don’t know why I’ve lived this long

I don’t know why I can’t go on,

Though I must go on.

I don’t know,

A smell, a fragrance, a light, a sound

Something out there draws me

And once again I move. 

From the very back corner of my cage

Out there to here, inside to outside

The window dirty with tears,

The gate is dirty with blood.

A new day begins

I try to let go of the past,

I try to forget the times I couldn’t save a life

I try to remember the times I did.

It’s all so blurred what she said, he said.

I don’t know what I ‘ve done or didn’t do

But I take the blame.

I own up.

Punish me.

I was born for this.

It’s all been just  reaction and  cringe

I am reaching out to touch you in love

But you hit me away again and again and again

I hit you.  

You hit me. 

Long after the laughter has stopped

We are holding each other 

In a love or death embrace.

I don’t know what you want or don’t want.

Now I’m just afraid 

I stand up and get knocked down 

Because I stood up wrong or there is no right

I just don’t know

It’s a cacophony of circus sounds in the absurdity of names

I am a nationality, a gender, a criminal, a professional, 

I am a minister, materialist and spiritual

A counterpoint, a pod.

I’m tired, fatigued, in constant pain, weary

Some days a little  better than others a little worse.

I laugh because it hurts to cry.

I ride my merry go round horse

In my adult body,

Silly, ridiculous, foolish

I have cared for so many  babies, raised so many children,

Trained so many men and women.

For what I no longer know.

I could have stood up and not buckled.

I could have jumped higher and not fallen.

I could have been all you needed me to be. 

I could have believed.

I could loved longer.

I could have prayed harder

I could have been stronger.

But that was not how I was made.

I am just a throw away impermanence.

A passing.

But every time I ran away

There was no end to my running

Even now I hear your footsteps

Ahead of me, behind me and all around me

Perhaps I’m not alone.

Still I am ashamed.

I cannot show my face.