What Am I? Poem by Leria Hawkins

Date: October 21,2021
By: Leria Hawkins

What am I
In your next-to-nothing world
Of spewed spunk
And well-worn blanket of lies
A cast off, rubbish?
Refuge for the next big ego trip
Some grand touting, garbage spouting
Mind tripping head game
Where you crown me a star, the grand cliché?
Wearing a sweet naïve smile
My heart and soul trimmed and plated for your feast
Fresh prey for the snake…the beast

What am I
In this masochistic squaller
Of my own warped sensibilities
Where I've laid myself bare
Naked, a self-made paradox
Vacillating between righteous and wicked
A paradigm of self-destruction
Clinging to a one-way ticket
Thumb out, the hasty hitcher
Traversing a rocky road to nowhere
Where streets are paved with never-never
and souls are lost in deep dark places

What am I
In the slow drip of your morning coffee
A splash of cream, a hint of sugar
A welcome wake-up from the moth-eaten
Grind of the same old, same old
The vehement craving of a new passion
The stir of embers, of flash, and flame
A quick-fix, hot-blooded reminder
Of want, and need and morbid curiosity
A malady eating away at the better parts of you
An itch, crawling like spiders across your soul
Or perhaps, just the unquenchable thirst for fire and danger

What am I
But a 5-star recipe for disaster
A mélange of whisky and madness
Cold blended, a splash of sadness
Offering naught but the wreckage of grease and bone
Sustenance for the misaligned
The off-kilter pot always simmering
Ready to boil at the first whimpering
A sultry sigh, a midnight whisper
Obscenities in fast frozen paralysis
An asylum for unspoken proclivities
The apropos end to a beautiful calamity

What am I
To rest my morals in your tomb of ruin
To repeat the tragedy over and over
But never learn the lesson
To give in earnest…
Accept the indifference as my moral obligation
I ask you again, what am I?
But "next-to-nothing" in your world
In the bright and shining of your spotless existence
In your make believe, grand illusions, deep dark dreams
Your web or lies, your tangled strings
What am I but rust, and dirt, and the grime you can't wash off

What am I
But trapped in this rotting cage of clay
Your poison running thru my veins
Ripping and tearing at what remains
There's venom, like bile on my tongue
My ashes, devoid of strength, of spirit
I am hateful, merciless, utterly twisted
My reflection, an odd and unfamiliar stranger
A dark and sinister presence lives here
Woven into the very fabric of who I once was
No joy, no promise of tomorrow
Just a void, an empty space, a grave
And I, a ghost…still asking…What am I?

© copyright by Leria Hawkins,2021