Can I exist without you?

For you, blasted devil, the persistent whining nag at my ear

and the dagger that sways slightly in the breeze

as it hovers without remorse or feeling

at the knotted black foul smelling lumps in my spine,

can I truly be who I am now without your whispered

torture, the sledge hammer attacks and small drill bit

sensation causing ripples up and down what is

no longer there, if you too also disappear without trace?

 

An old friend I hadn’t seen

in thirty years remarked that they had all known

I hadn’t seemed the same in that final year,

but the slight masking of whisky was working wonders

as a preventative pain killer.

Pain Killer…if I took enough,

as I have contemplated many times

it would certainly bring relief

but being a soul that likes to rebel at times

and certainly takes great pleasure

in being a stubborn mule,

the e-or die trying,

that by giving in just now

would mean I couldn’t look pain in the face

everyday, stick two fingers up its nose

and tell it with a mulish grin

to fuck off, to join the ranks of the hypocritical

and the ones who told me at seventeen

that there was nothing wrong…

 

If not for you, of sweet and tortuous pain,

the forever cloud above my head

and the raging soul that I suppress  with a smile

and a smile though I may be a villain,

or at least an obdurate, immovable ass,

I would not wish you away, not now,

for I have done more with my time

than you thought, than they thought

and I have fought to piss you off everyday

though you come back and haunt me,

my dreams you make foul

and each movement I feel as

though I want to finally say

I am not happy in the body I am in,

there must be some mistake,

I was not meant to be this way…

 

For you, dear sweet, driving, relentless, fucked up,

unyielding, obstinate, ruthless and pitiless brutal pain,

I say fuck you with a New York swagger

and a cause to live for to help me destroy you

day by day.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015