Like A Coward
Like a thief in the night, you just slipped away
You simply cut the cord and released your hold
Granted your last fantasy, your life’s petty wish
Aligned in your mind, that only the good die young
But you died like a coward
In your sleep and alone
In the springtime of the lives
Of the seeds you’d sown
As if to avoid paying your depts
To never be confronted
To never have had to admit
All the ways you chose to submit
To your fears, your insecurities
To the alcohol, or your precious indulgences
To the scars you left
But I feel no almost connection to you at all anymore
As if no part of me could have come from you
Light years beyond your pathetic delusions
Like the years that have passed since you passed
You’re further and further away from me
Even my memories of talking to you
Of your voice, of your presence
Of your touch, of your scent
And of your sickness…
Now I watch your image unfold
Like a photograph, into stillness
It translates into one word only
…Weakness
Like that of your feeble attempts
Or your warped delusions
Of how it would be better for us
Were you to take us with you
I imagine the words falling from my tongue
I imagine what someone would think of it
“My mother attempted suicide many times
Of which, at least 3 times,
She tried taking my sisters and I with her”
There aren’t really words for the taste
That knowledge leaves you with
What right did you believe you had?
We were your responsibility, not your property!
I can hear the everyday excuses
Of children having children
And sickness brooding more sickness
Yet these experiences, each of your choices
Have weighed upon me, impressed upon me
And who I have become
Who I had to become, because of them…
Moments of absent control, darkness
Shining throughout my quiet emotional tides
Throughout the everyday moments in time
Throughout even the would-be happiest moments of my life
These repressed memories having finally shined through
My illusions, and my delusions have begun crumbling
Creating what can only exist
In the minds of the righteous
Dreamt up in the mind of a little boy
True only to a repressed and protected me
But to everyone else
Nothing more than cute little fantasies
That of my imaginary saintly mother
And many of my adulthood ideals…
Ridiculous afterworlds of perfection
Dreamt up utopias
These worlds live in my writing…
And through my therapeutic obsession in writing
From the context, to the content, to the writhing extents
In the heightened polarity of the pendulum, ie: my extremes
The passionate hope and longing for freedom
In every one of my waking dreams
My lack of trust in a conspiring world
To the vanity of my paranoia
My many varying attempts at control
I now know why I never felt safe
I know now why I never feel safe
Because “I’ve Always Been Crazy”
And yes, I guess
“It’s kept me from going insane…”
Yet simultaneously, I feel this weight on my chest
I look down, reminded, to see
This small, heavy, golden pendant
And it takes on a new meaning
From the desire of a reminder
To some strange badge of honor
But still, its there…
Like everything in me
That’s ever been a part of you
Floating here
ⓒ 2009 Shawn Michael Quinn
Greece Trip '09
Amazing Sunset
Greek Twilight
Ruins of Aliki Village
Aliki (little salt lake)
Athens watching
Dogs of Freedom
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