This poem was originally published October 2, 2014 for national poetry day. I thought it appropriate for this Throw Back Thursday, the Fifth of November. Remember, remember.
Am I Going Crazy?
Am I going insane and dazed?
Am I too lost to face this?
And what will it cost to escape?
Nothing is right.
I am so scared.
–Korn
Surrounded. No way out.
Count the walls. One. Two. Three. Four. Where is the door? Someone please, show me the door. I don’t see it.
Everything is the same.
The light is bright. Pleasant, not harsh like before. What is this before? Nothing is before. All is now.
Now. Soon it will be later, but that will be now too.
I need something. Smell, taste, sound. All I do is see. Eye before eee, except after see. Not that see. See.
My arms will not move. Is imprisoned a feeling? Is immobile a state you can embrace? I try to turn my head, but I can’t. My neck is frozen in place, but I cannot feel what holds it.
Do you understand? I cannot feel. Do you know what that is like?
Inhale deeply. The only sound is my breath. Don’t fluorescent lights hum? I strain, but nothing. Silence.
I cannot scream to bring sound to this place of sameness.
Smell. Surely there is something. The canned air of an institution. Can you not smell air when it is stale?
Inhale again. Nothing. Not the faint smell of bleach, not the smell of cheap air freshener covering the scent of human waste and sweat. Those I have smelled before.
There it is again. Before.
But I do not smell it now. And all is now, now, now.
Now I smell nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing, see only soothing, plain light.
Mellow light.
Haunting light.
Might as well be nothing light.
I cannot lick my lips. Something surrounds my tongue so it to cannot move. My lack of feeling extends to my mouth too. I don’t know what it is.
I cannot taste it. Cannot taste the sticky dryness of a morning after sleep induced by alcohol or pills, it matters not which. Nothing.
My one sense, sight, fills my world with boredom. Does time pass?
Well, does it?
Nothing is right.
I must escape this, no matter what the cost.
I am lost, too lost to face this.
I am going insane and I am dazed.
I am going crazy.
I am so scared.
