132. Soul Crisis In The Rose Vortex

A constant:
the same words
returning to
describe the empty
feelings of removal
that consume me
when faced with a
wailing walls of faces.

The vortex
the void
what I call
‘the big empty’
or sometimes
‘the death camp’
or maybe on a
good day
‘the devil’s
sports hall’,

where the sound is
a hollow echo
like the wind
whipping at a turret
of an abandoned
castle in a remote
and desolate place

or else the strangulated
cries of desperation
that must surely
soundtrack what we
commonly perceive
to be ‘hell’;

or maybe just that dividing line
between pain and pleasure
between life and death
between protest and celebration
state repression and
total abandonment
and/or emancipation.

Either way:
the sound is ice cold
like a nail in the spine
that instant feeling like
everything you’ve ever
known has slipped away
and left you stranded.

Like every regret you
have ever harboured
comes home to roost at once
like every wasted second
like every girl you ever loved
like every single salted tear

re-appears, to remind you
that this life – any life -
is a lonely life, and that
in the end, when the scores
are counted, and the tallies
noted we live and we exist
and we die alone.

Afterwards: as expected
- as is now customary -
the shrill layers
of human voices
in exultation and the
screams of expectation
and unadultered adoration
(or is it adulation?)
peel away like an onion
to reveal nothing at its core.

It is this nothingness
that consumes me each
night; the silence of
fifty thousand echoes,
deafening even when
they’re long gone;

it’s like the building
is haunted by the night,
like all those screams
are eternally trapped
inside to rebound off the walls
bouncing and colliding
like a phalanx of lost souls
caught between life
and that great celestial
otherness known as infinity,
resigned to a life sentence
in a chaotic, deafening limbo;

it is this that I fear
the most - the very real
possibility that nothing
- and I mean nothing –
means anything; love,
money, fame, success;
nothing: zip, zilch, nada
the big goose egg; all
for what? For nothing.
It is thoughts like these
that, out on tour, in the
spotlight, exposed, naked,
scrutinized and dissected
I have to deal with each day
in my own little way.

Lord only knows
where I will find
the strength to
keep on giving.