The Darkness I Swallowed...

The Darkness I Swallowed

An obsidian winged harbinger of doom-steeped inspiration stepped out from the realm of nightmares and magic, fantasy and horror, and stalked me as I went about my life, wary and restless, with bouts of melancholy and points of incredible apathy...

When did I swallow this fount of darkness?

When did the black-hearted oblivion rip into my mind, my heart, my soul?

When, where, and how did I imbibe this horrid substance? 

Was it a drink or some kind of smoke?

Was is some snort of poison, or was it a shot straight into my shredded heart?

Did I give it permission, an open invitation?

Did I wear a slinky dress or leave the keys in the ignition?

Did I want it, baby? Did I ask for it all?

Did I devote my being in a moment of weakness? 

Did I sign on for this black hole to take over, to take me in; did I let it inside?

Did I resign control of myself over to this vortex? 

Did I give this thing it control of this mind and body I inhabit, just to become the meat puppet I truly am? 

Have I finally become what we all truly are, under these pretty faces in varieties of colors and shapes and sizes and features, in all these variations of strengths and weakness, good and evil?

All I know is this darkness sees me and it knows me beneath, within, up inside and in the deepest darkest parts--and I thought I kept them so well hidden. 

Down, down, so deep down, right to the core of our make-up, all blood and muscle, tissue and bone, gore and shit, piss and puss, disgusting monkeys, all of us, driven by instinct and lust and violence and cruelty...

All of us driven by that grandiose notion of our place, and how special and extraordinary we are, so close to God, so keen to kindness and love and light in this universe so vast and too complex to ever fathom... 

Is it all a just some neat and great cosmic joke? 

Are we just jesters for the gods, seeking to amuse at their feet in their courts? 

[I want to eat the joke; the experiment has failed, send a flood, a fire, a collapse]

The great moral dilemma of science: take away God and the hope of an afterlife and we should be happy with one "great" existence; oh yes, elevate mankind through randomness and science explains all, knowing we are nothing but non-random selection, some fish that fucked a squirrel that in turn became a monkey that walks and talks...what hope I glean. 

Oh yes, without any purpose in this limitless expanse of galaxies and systems, among supernovae and the stars that died so we may live, yet we are meat puppets that developed speech and movement, industry, technology...yes, what a wonderful life!

Yes, I swallowed the darkness; go to confession for any sin or simply believe in nothing, the ability to do anything, and yet the emptiness I feel is all-consuming, my apathy knows no bounds.  

So, is this a possession, a physical manifestation of the external demonic beast we seek? 

Is this that coalesced, nebulous negativity outside us that infiltrates my soul, that Satan on whom we blame for all moral dilemmas within ourselves?

Is this that raging internal hunger, the eternal Ouroboros, feeding upon itself in the dark heart of humanity, that infernal monster that dwells within us all?

Could this simply be my misfiring of bio-chemical neurons and synaptic circuits? 

Could it truly be mood, personality, a canker of the mind in a soulless machine of a body?

Here I ask, “What’s the difference, really?” Are we not splitting hairs? 

For evil is as evil does and there is something defined as darkness that boils within me, a rage that is full of bile and hatred chokes me up and fatalistically demands my suffering, that sometimes wants the blood of retribution, of vengeance, of justice to my existence…

I am being eaten alive by something I cannot see, but is there;

Something that is not completely me, but within the darkest chambers of my mind, my heart, and perhaps my soul.

This something wants to push out every speck of light, and churns with pitch, a void of rage and bitterness…

Yes, there is something that wants full control of me and in these bleak moments I feel myself giving in; I have no power to fight, the despair overwhelms all else…

Finally, this something that wants blood and pain, surely mine, which is in great supply, but perhaps it wants others’, as well; I simply cannot guess the end game.

I am in the struggle, I am the struggle; it is all in me, all over and about me, could it be all me?

Oh, please let me out of this everlasting battle!

I must vomit this thing out, I need to purge; I need salvation and absolution and confession for the sins that I have only dreamed of in bloody Technicolor in fantasies of pure horror and unadulterated freedom.

Cut it out of me, this parasitic thing, this body snatcher that has its claws within my soul. 

Drive the demon out, plunge me back into the raw, skinned reality of the hopeless, the smell of decay, the endless empty promises of ambition… 

Sprinkle your vacant messages and prophecies from a God you could never fathom yet claim to know better than me.

This endless churning black mass of rage, this helpless hopelessness and eternal sorrow, this self-pitying party of screaming tantrums and tears, it eats at my heart,  and rapes my will.

This something is sucking my life-force, draining me dry; it spreads me wide and thrusts inside uninvited deep into the folds of my mind, the worst violation I could imagine, leaving me bruised and bloody to nobody’s eyes.

I cannot cry it away, and yet it will lie in wait for my next moment of weakness.. 

But when it strikes, and when I give in and when it takes over, who knows what I may do?

When it comes churning its envy and dark bitterness, its rage, deep and bottomless, will I slit my wrists or yours?

When I Swallow that Darkness again, what could possibly happen then?

©Rayven McCoy, 2015