Thirteen Shapes – Part 11

Things never seem to end the way I want
Accomplished Nothing, discovered Nothing
I walk around in circles for forty or fifty years
Then I die and hope that they will remember me’

Dead in the middle of the Nowhere
Some pathetic last attempt to rectify
A hundred thousand mistakes and forgotten people
A complete waste of dying time
A hopeful notion of last minute enlightenment
A convict begging for his life despite his former self
Unfortunate enough to be born after Christ had already left

I hung, my veins under pressure popped
Strange spinal noises, metal on metal grind
This may have all been a heat delirium episode
Maybe I wasn’t technically hanging
Under that ray intensity things become hard to decipher
As if deciphering was what I had been doing anyway

Lack of oxygen has unique effects upon the human psyche
Though usually lasting no more than seconds
Time feels slowed, diluted with a thickening agent
Like the blood inside the recently dead, clotting without movement
Like the syrup of time, the air feels thick, too thick to breathe
A gurgle, restricted passage
Deep breathe, pull deep, salival inhalation, drowning
It felt more like drowning, yes, I think it was drowning

Slowly the time thickens to the point that it stops
Everything comes to a stop except the mind
Unable to think in frozen time, it begins to dream
An object, blurry, interpreted, reinterpreted
A sea shell, an automobile, a building, a city
That strange place where the mind is not asleep
But objects are not tangible

For a while I thought I was in the city again
The bumblebees danced and played
I felt ill, but relaxed enough to remain docile
Strapped to a board while they prodded
Was it understanding they were after?

Focus, focus
What was the mission again?
Seize the day, become fruitful and multiply

I repeated over and over ‘What is this place?’
Maybe I believed I actually would tell myself
A mental rhetorical question? Had I died?
‘Why am I in this hospital bed?’

Loud beeping over and over and over
Falling asleep in one place, waking in another
A white sanitary cell, a dark filthy cell
‘Now my fingers look different?’
Deep mental breaths, moving too fast again
Unable to decipher the images, they piled up
I kept getting behind

Through all of it, the only thing I knew for sure
Was the burning in my eyes
Blinding light that penetrated the lids
A bowl of wrath poured out upon my body

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