A hymn for a nihilist

This was an interesting piece. I tweeted a couple of early drafts as I worked on it. Then it disappeared, deep into the well. Now it has resurfaced, the stones out its pockets. It is much changed. It went in a therapy and came out a hymn.

This is: A hymn for a nihilist

Wipe clean your eyeball on a sleeve,

This is not a benediction for your strife.

Pick up this note of mourning on cold days.

Days when skies are nicotine yellow lit life.

You could be happier, I’d say.  

What claims victory in war,

when you’re only fighting yourself?

What case are you trying to prove,

when you prosecute your own defence?

You want to watch some drown,

but to do it you must wade deeper in.

Don’t pierce that voodoo doll of yours,

you’ll only prick a finger with the pin.  

Young romantics, youthful dead.

Though who can truly tell the difference?

The trophy on an arm and another

skeleton cluttering the cupboard.

Rattling bones hush the screams.

Out of car windows, Time discards you

like empty tins, rattling on the road.

Seeing the car get small, you’re cut free.  

Velvet, burst stuffed heart cushion.

Dead fragile, vein thin leaf smoked pew.

Wallpaper peeling from humid stress,

Everything needs a redecoration.

Every bit moulders in ruins.

It’s complicated and it’s ridiculous

how decomposition is natural.

Come to terms with whatever the point is.

The perished, holly berry mildew,

worn out as a coat that really suits you.  

Years poured in, paper thin.

All the people are junkyards,

corrugated dolphin companions in the surf.

Wipe clean your other eyeball on a sleeve,

See through your ghosts giving up.

Wring out the excruciating tone.

View terror under grief within.

Creep towards The Word like medication,

Take it anytime, whatever dose,

It won’t cure your mortal bone.  

God, how did you get so old?

Trauma keeps from feeling the years.

Stolen act of misguided kindness.

I sense works growing cold in my warm core.

Watching tornadoes touch down on the ocean floor

make it worthwhile to endure.

Is this good therapy? I’m really, very, not so sure.