Shame

Shame


Trained to menial service in the Name of
a sacred Lord too often taken in sacrilege,
how do I possess a moral core?
What instinct for revulsion guides my
internal tally? How does a child of sin
define evil,
or good?
Is it okay if I have no choice?
Does compulsion render me blameless?
The hunger corrupts me, invades my skin
and sinew. My tongue craves succulent
intoxication. My sense glands seek prey.
I am nothing, only all-consuming need.
Yet, I can choose.
I can become the hunger, submit to crippling misery.
No hope of death as pain worsens, debilitates,
worsens, debilitates more. Forests burn, seethe
through every nerve; sewers burst their rot to putrefy
throughout my consciousness; evil imps brutally sting
like angry wasps. Suppurating
beyond pain, wordless whimper.
No end, ever exceeding so there is no break of forgetting.
I choose again, what seems a lesser sentence.
I choose to feed on the next vessel of blood
I see. A homeless man sleeps against a building
near my entrance from my erstwhile hellhole
onto the street. I hope his dreams were of beauty.
I hope he floats buoyant dreams forever.
He forever haunts what I try to cast as dreams.
My sire had drilled in the importance of clean up.
We who don’t exist can leave no evidence.
No longer a self-organizing being, this fresh meat
is a fitting gift to feral scavengers, fellow creatures
of the night, fulfillment of nature’s wasteless cycles.
Unlike such feral beasts, I am not natural.  My cycles
have no natural conclusion.  Death after violent death,
never my own.  Always mine.
Nightmares of falling endlessness, engraving of trauma,
what I know of eternity. Freedom’s illusion cast forward,
a conscience ever branded, bathed in fresh blood,
an endless pit of murder.
I tell myself silly stories. I maniacally laugh
at the sky, at the waves, at lively weather.
The elementals understand.