theNakedAtheist

– I –

I have made a discovery.
A startling thing.
I have stumbled upon myself.
And I have discovered: I have no worth beyond this body I name myself.
A body, it is hardly much.
Yet it is so, it is so.
I have discovered a marvel. It is so.
My body is myself.

Myself.
It is so, though.
I’m no great thinker. My mind is no great thing.
I play chess, I play ping-pong: both but little better than average.
I cook a little food.
I am a student — again, a little better than average.
Which isn’t much to claim.
And, once claimed, amounts to nothing.

Nothing.
Certainly it can’t justify me.
Isn’t sufficient to explain or account or pay for my existence.
I exist, and nothing I can do will pay for the cost of it.
What I do, all that I am able to do, in the end lies worthless to pay for my existence.
I write — yet I can’t find the magic words.
I hate the words I do find.
Words despised in the blood for not being quite good enough.
Not magical enough.
I want — I want to pay for myself.
Unable.

Unable.

I am a tangled bundle of old debts.
I shall never, never pay them off.
It’s beyond me.
Well then, I will just be, and know that I am nothing.
This dream I have, I will hold onto it, even if it is a fire that burns me.
I will be burned, that’s all.
What choice have I — what else?
To live in the darkness that is death?
To not live?
Or just to be, in the darkness of life.

– II –

To live I must hold a little candle.
Yet the very candle is me myself, individual, inviolate.
Beyond me, yet myself.
The little flame flickers. I am sick.
Flame bursts forward in flashiness, strong and proud. And I am healthy.
Beautifully healthy.

A stupefaction comes up, like a dark air: flame ebbs low, I’m sick again.
It dies to a small hard incandescence.
And I know, with a painful intuitive knowledge, I want fuel for my life.
Some other flame, proud, bright, to bring me to.
If but a small lingering ember — if even that.
But something, something to touch me, and I it — as if touch were some unknown softness, and gentle, so gentle.
A harsh touch puts us both out.

– III –

Life flames like a candle that burns detained, or not detained.
And it longs for fuel, for friendly conjunction, a cross-flame.
My blood longs to fuel the pure yellow flame of another.
To make its show, for all it is worth.
If it be not much, then I’m sorry, I apologize: it be not much.
I can’t change what I be.
Let me burn out, let me die.
Or take what little I am and flame me bright for my one short burst of glory.
Burn me, die me out.

Ah, to be burned out! Burned unto death.
It would be enough: it would be enough.
Or else to burn out, like a flame bereft.
Fate is fate and must be so. Let it be so.
If the moon crosses me, the moon crosses me.
Then let the moon cross me.
I can’t escape the past, which is my body.
Nor undo the myriad deaths that have frozen like ice to become the past.
Frozen, they are incorporated into the body.
And so the body wears the masks of many childhood deaths.

And my death is that I cannot talk, I cannot make communication, from my male being to the female.
That death has gotten upon me.
It is a matter of grace — moon’s grace — and grace isn’t there for me.
The moon denies me it.
I wear the denial like a death-mask.

– IV –

I tell you it isn’t my choice.
I tell you I have no choice.
Once, once, moon gave her sanction to me; perhaps twice she gave it so.
The first time I betrayed myself, my own self, in three ways.
One was ignorance and one was fear.
The third was uncertainty.

The second time I betrayed again, and was betrayed.
My crime was knowledge, and lack of fear.
I ought to have feared.
The third was uncertainty.

The grace has not been given again.
And I must admit, the second time, it was hardly given full-blooded.
It was only a partial grace.

– V –

The matter of love has defeated me.
I stand here, totally defeated in love.
And unable to love, perhaps.
And unable to come whole-hearted, as to a loved one.
And unable to trust the whole-hearted coming of another.
My brain wants some sort of surety given.
My brain wants an exchange of gifts, first.
Draw out a document.
Draw out a legal document!
Let us get this in writing.

So you see I am defeated in love: it’s gotten the best of me.
A little while, and I cannot trust to love.
A little while, and I cannot trust the love of anybody.
Would you that I should trust you?

Then tell me so — tell me so quickly, don’t wait!
Tell me now before my flame has lapsed to a mere weak ember from its wounds.
You shall have to come quickly or my wounds may scar.
Scarred, it will be the permanent death-mark of love on my body.

If these seem the words of a scream — I wish that it were a gentle scream.
A loud one only scares you away.
Yet I would to the gods I could be heard.

Is anyone out there going to come in?
Knock on this door — will you?

– VI –

Look at my leg here: it is nothing.
A bunch of tangled, denied feelings. Nothing.
It has no direction in which to orient its life.
No recipient for its surge of life.
No being to surge to.

Therefore my being is directionless — has only a dream.
A dream: but the memory of a longing wanted.
I’ve a longing wanted — wanted by me — but still just a memory, nothing surer.

I want that my longing be unclothed, be turned to naught, be made nothing.
Let it be made nothing.
I want my dream to be surpassed, as one runner surpasses another.
Dream ceases to exist.
An experience different from the experience of longing has come by, trampled over it.
On over it.
Oh that my dream should disappear into dust.
From ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
Would that you or you or you should become a trampler.
One who tramples longings to dust.
Come to me with your runner’s arching feet!
Shall I run with you?

Shall I make to the wind with you?
Shall my fingers eat meal with your fingers?
Shall our feet follow as shadow does shadow?
Shall we know the mutual dark?
Shall we share this day — the one-directional day?
Shall we weave our sunlight together?
You and I, shall we do all these?
Or shall we retreat to our corners, our little corners, and do nothing?

– VII –

Myself, I am willing to give up.
I am willing to say, to you, to myself, to anyone, enough of all this striving.
I am all strived out.
I have been rubbed again and over again with so much strife, I am quite sore.
My deepest emotional self is sore.
So that it doesn’t know what is a friendly touch anymore.
Every touch hurts now.
Oh, don’t touch me. It shall only mean pain.
Oh, don’t touch me! for I am wounded there, wounded vitally.

There’s an island in my breast, a great wound in my body.
It is chafed white.
The very vessels my deep blood flows in, have been skinned white.
So that my blood is afraid and full of sick.
I am full of sick.
Oh stay away from me — for I fear I shall give you my sickness.
Oh come touch me — come touch me! — or I feel nothing, nothing can heal me of my sickness!
Oh come and touch me and heal me.
Oh let me be healed!

– VIII –

It shall not be easy.
It won’t be the easiest thing you have done.
The sickness won’t leave me willingly.
You must have some faith.

Unless you have faith in me, all is lost.
Lest you have faith in the weak yet lingering health that is within me.
There is a health, small struggling flame, within me.
Can you find it? can you flame it?

And I know the trust that I shall have to place in you.
Yet I say I am willing.
I will be wonderful.
My blood will be filled with the sanctity of wonder — utterly.
It will be so.
Can you put trust in that?

It will be so, then. It will be so.