Slices of Cruelty

Quiet whispers from horrors past
haunt sweet slumber’s chambers
and deliver upon these mental mists
mighty swarms of tiny microbes,
predatory needles of unforgotten heat and pain,
each carrying within itself
the smallest slice of cruelty
once visited upon this body.

They rustle through remnants of buried terrors
from crypts long-thought sealed.
They brush upon the fortifications and barriers,
that years of determined struggle have built,
easily eroding all signs of forward progress.

They permeate this fortress
as they flow and pass
each whisper carrying its multitude
to its pre-determined epidural destination,
to burrow beneath the tenderest layers,
instinctively nipping and clawing,
nesting in unforgotten and unabandoned warehouses
of remembered pain and degradation,
warehouses marked this day
only by faded scars upon this skin
and newly-created stings and bites,
each now harboring at least one tiny beast

burrowing

Burrowing

BURROWING.

Thousands work upon the trace memories
of the flesh
triggering the struggle not to scratch this endless itch,
for to scratch is to release more venom,
more poison,
into the bloodstream

Silently, instructions echo
“Do not feel. DO NOT FEEL!”
Work
to work for stimulation overload,
hoping to short out this process and force the multitude back into the farthest recesses.
Every nerve, scraped raw,
remains ultra-sensitive and sore.

The mind’s eye sees,
with a clarity unmarred by time,
each jagged tear from sharpened blade,
broken blister from cigarette burn.
The body remembers.

Whether one can overload the senses becomes conspicuously irrelevant,
because the body remembers.

It supercedes all else and leaves no recourse.
To close the eyes and thereby hide from a lover
this knowledge and shame of self-betrayal,
of knowing that this, what now is touched by gentle hand,
calling forth the inner heat,
the electric current,this kinetic energy,
which feverishly awaits the switch be thrown,
had once been tapped,
not by seduction, but by coercion;
not with gentleness, but with force.

The electrified jolt had been loosed so long ago, and to date,
absolution for this cruel and unforeseen betrayal upon the senses
has never been forthcoming
because all attempts to reach
acceptance of what can’t be changed
are tempered by the ever present echo of laughter,
the laughter of evil men.

Though a loving touch may properly evoke a loving response,
It’s still age-old laughter heard.

Alternatively, to leave eyes open is to invite,
and thereby risk,
acknowledgment of being a victim,
not only of inherent evil,
but also of the evil within.

To face that prospect?
That once-adoring eyes may show,
reflected in them,
a shame known intimately
because of this body’s decline
into the darkest depths of depravity.

And thus it is that the body remains,
as always,
without recourse.

and without recourse,

Eternally unsatisfied.