I have experienced the cold, mind-numbing terror
Of belief in hidden motives—a gutted smile,
Insincerity reigning supreme, a police officer in every shadow—
I can trust no one, not even myself,
Certainly not God, for he stuck me into this...
I look frantically around me, my ego monstrously inflated,
Filling the world,
And my face is bathed in cold sweat,
Pale, like the sheets that are still dreaded,
My eyes staring, wide and wild—
People stare at me, and the horror increases geometrically.
It is twisted, convoluted; it will always feed on itself,
Grow on itself, a vicious, destructive circle with no way out.
Lasers no one but me can see strike around me;
Conspiracy, impersonal, gargantuan, ubiquitous, renitent, dark and cold,
Seeks relentlessly to grind me to pulp—
It does not matter who the real enemies are—my imagination furnishes a googolplex of them—
And somewhere inside, a seed of self-loathing prompts me to grab like reflex
For a .44 Magnum lying by my left hand,
Cocked,
Every chamber loaded.
© 2003 Mark Andrew Holmes.