EMBRACING CHAOS

Come out come out wherever you are!
I know some of you are still in there,
sneaking around the back rooms of my mind,
woven into the fabric of my existence,
secure in the comfort of my routines
and nourished by my unconscious and all too desperate collaboration.

But this time, don't expect my usual complicity
(and don't count on my habitual dependence)
FOR I AM A RECOVERING DELUSIONIST!
I'm onto you, as I'm onto me--and our dirty little secret. You know what?
I have declared a state of Zero Tolerance and nothing can ever be the same.
Listen up. It's over. You're out.

No judgments. No grudges.
I offer a safe right of passage to all delusions that pack their bags,
uproot and leave town today! Hey! Out you come!
You can't hide from me forever, despite your perfect camouflage.
(At least, not now that I know you're there--
though I must say I am concerned at how many more of you there may be).

Understand, it's not--
forgive me for speaking frankly--
that I seek to expose you for the hapless delusions that you are
(though sometimes, in fact, I do have a malicious desire to do that).
It's just that, ultimately, my aim is to live in truth.
And about time!

But please know that in separating from you
the toll on my poor heart will be great--
greater than great, for you've been like family to me.
It seems that you have always been there for me, as I for you,
and in our parasitic co-dependence, you have been my truth, my reality,
and without you, life is filled with fear and uncertainty.

Please understand, I suddenly realize
I don't have time to live life from a false perspective.
Don't you see that my very reason for being is on the line?
So go you must, and go you will - but go in peace,
for you were the very foundation upon which I have always walked,
you were all that separated me from the chaos.

No disgrace, no dishonor, no loss of face,
for we have lived faithful, chaste, to each other bound,
and I will miss you dearly.
Now, the chaos must be faced;
new reality accepted, embraced;
previous comfortable beliefs erased; and you, gone, without a trace.

But how can I wipe clean the windows of my perception
when everything I do is tainted by my own interference?
(Or is this, perhaps, just another false question,
the conveniently unspoken answer to which has served for years to justify
my perpetuation of your existence?)
Woah! Do I like having you around or what? Exposed! I have to confess:

the plain truth is that I conspire to perceive order in a form my fragile self can accept;
I conspire to believe in borders my blinded soul can detect;
I have been harboring and perpetuating delusions within boundaries I dare expect!
The fault is mine, and mine it is to stop the rot.
And I think I can say that I have proffered no pretense, no dishonesty,
no willful attempt to corrupt reality. Simply, it is time for you to go.

In the name of life, I owe myself this kindness, for you are making a pantomime of my existence, and if I cannot be honest with myself at this juncture, then it will be as if I have never been.
And though my heart knows anger and sadness--
both at your existence in my life and at your departure--
I am grateful for the opportunity to see life anew
through a rip in the fabric I have been weaving these years through.

This is a bust! This is a raid! My life is a travesty,
I am totally dis-made. Permanently disarrayed--
(and now pondering, welcoming impermanence as the greatest of gifts
for at this stage, I am embarassed to have lived so long
before bringing you into evictable manifestation,
for I have been sublimely blind, though subliminally aware of your game for decades).

Alas, I fear I have tended to construe things intellectually and am
coming to practical conclusions only now that I have confronted your existence;
now that I have understood the sordid nature of you;
now that I have requested your departure;
and I don't want even the finest imprint of anything that was yours to remain on my mind,
body, heart or soul, nor anywhere in my environment when you take your leave. Now go...

...but please know that your departure wrenches my heart and will pain me ever more,
for I believed in you! I lived by your laws!
And now I feel deceived, as if discovering some terrible treachery, some hideous plot to conceal reality.
I feel ashamed, foolish, naïve, ignorant. You have been lying to me, cheating me!
That's enough now! All delusions must go, for I must will it be so!
(And surely, I must be making headway, for they are falling fast). "You hear that? You are falling fast!"

Their insolent persistence ignites my anger as never before.
I snatch at them, seize them, sickened to the core.
I kick them out, good and hard, bolting the door behind them, screaming:
"bloody bloody good riddance!"
How vilely audacious! How hideously predacious!
They dared to impose their mendacious crap on me? Ha! But then I woke up.

A metaphysical slap in the face;
a brutal jog to the consciousness;
a shockwave of realization and suddenly, I see it all.
I'm hyper-spaced, vertiginous,
and the nausea mounts in proportion to the speed with which the ground beneath me caves in,
as well it would, wouldn't it, when one of the 'big ones' goes.

Bong! Bong! Got it wrong! Falling, sprawling, flesh crawling,
no footholds, no handles, no rice, no sandals,
no bearings, no takers, no candlestick-makers,
no bodge it, no dodge it, no familiar logic,
no way to climb back up onto the banks, the muddy banks,
the slippery muddy banks of the old world order.

Nothing but G-forces, my colon in my throat
and the wondering where it all will end,
as a belting reality check comes flying round the bend:
I have been living my own lies!
And although stranded in chaos, shocked and 'disillusioned',
I am nevertheless relieved still to be alive

given that I had been wandering, naked,
a newborn, striding oblivious through a battlefield of bullets,
and God alone knows how he steered me through.
Where I'm from they say that "God looks after drunks and wee weans",
and I wonder which team he assigned me to?
(It would be equally difficult, and as great an honor to serve in either).

With work, some delusions benevolently dissipate, accepting their extinction,
and I thank them for that from deep within my heart, for there will, I fear, I pray, be many more.
They simply shrug, put out the lights, and gently close the door behind them.
Oh if only they knew that the light goes out on everything as they go…
on everything that I know… everything I do… everything I ever thought was true…
leaving only a cold expanse of darkness in which, for the moment, no warmth may flow, no love may grow, no life break through.

Others think they can just breeze in at any time,
rattling the doors and the windows of my mind.
"Hey! Open up! I'm freezing my behind!"
Well, isn't that tough! Too bad, too rough!
Too much drama, too much karma, too much 'stuff'.
Not by the hair on my chini-chin-chin…I WON'T let you in! Not knowingly. Not now.

And don't think I haven't noticed those of you who have slipped through the cracks,
old dogs into your old home, slinking silently back.
And I, strangely alone, and void of truth or fact,
have unconsciously eased up, certainly been slack,
somehow soothed to receive you, too quick to welcome your return,
relieved not to feel that searing emptiness stretch and burn.

But as I said, don't count on my usual complicity, for my intent is to route you out.
You KNOW I am through with delusions,
even this one, even YOU!
And now you look up at me with tragic, pleading eyes,
and I know that if I emit even one single sign of weakness at this point
it will be my demise. Everything will crack.

So what am I to do with you, now that you are back?
Would you have me take a stick and chase you around my conscious mind
with the intention of beating the holy shit out of you when I catch you?
Don't make me do that, for it would be a mighty hard thwack,
too brutal, and not at all representative of our relationship,
the memory of which should, with due respect, remain intact.

You know only too well that evicting you has been for me a living nightmare.
I urge you, therefore, please leave of your own free will.
Don't make me feel as if I am beating to death an innocent child, a life-long friend
or a loving parent in my desperate bid for liberty and survival!
It is bad enough that I should suffer mourning for the loss of a damned delusion,
so don't try it on! There can be no nostalgia!

The stronger I become, the more it comes to a fight, push to shove, wrong to right,
as threatened delusions dare take me on, dare refuse to be gone, dare oblige me to wrestle
with them my whole life long.
And when, finally, I round them up and beat them to a pulp, they don't die, won't die,
preferring to lie around groaning, crying, putrefying, wounded, bleeding, agonizing, pleading,
greedily feeding on my guilt! My guilt? Well, let them rot!
For if anyone has something to answer for here, I certainly have not. (Well, not any more).

Look!! Did you see that? There goes a trickster!
Same combat, different fight.
Just when I think I have identified and swept them from my life,
like trick birthday candles… woof! They re-ignite.
It takes me weeks to notice their little game,
so accustomed have I become to living in their light.

And look! Look! There flees a sniper! Nasty viscous little viper.
I know he plans to return, but now I'm ready for him for there is much that I have learned.
I don't know how long the scaffold around this newly emerging reality will hold;
I only know I must, for a time, face each day in darkness and cold;
I never know when a load bearing belief will crumble and fall;
but my delusions must and will be identified and eradicated, once and for all.