It has felt daunting to try to articulate the sense of anguish and jeopardy that I have been in over the last 5 months. I tried to fulfill my ideal of making weekly journal entries but found the reality too depressing to look at in black and white. However, I was recently asked to do some writing for an expo and came up with the following poem. The prompt was ‘future tense’.

It looms in the horizon, indefinite in depth and scope. I stare as it sprawls out, the hydra, covering my plane of vision. I have fought for life against head after venomous head while, on my blindside, another sprouts, just like a weed through concrete. I avert my eyes as best as I can. I wish to live in denial. But when my retinas refocus I see that the same monstrosity refracted from another angle. Indeed there is no retreat to make. With every jarring pang I intuit its drawing nearer, though it cannot be tangibly perceived. Though the path ahead isn’t discernible, I sense that it is long. Also unclear is weather more miserable is the route or destination. Every sinew in my body fights against another. There are no neutral parties. The nerves and fibers that make up the human musculoskeleton each stake their claim, and the casualties are many. The torment is great. I no longer am afforded the compassion to grieve my lost joys. But what lies beyond human tolerance? Is it bliss, nirvana? Is it mania? Or is it divergent? One instant drawn into skeletal thinness. An invisible, but continuous membrane reaching out into cold infinity. As a young man the cruelty of life seemed to be how each year passed more quickly than the one before. Now I have come to wonder if it is rather the brittle drone of it. It is how the succulent intimacy of being ensconced in a soft, warm bed can slowly become over ripe, suffocating and fetid