F***ed Up (Geist)

(Well, I can kinda talk now.

The thing's still swollen up like a balloon, but hey. Teenagers can't be choosers.

There is profanity, for you chil'ns with delicate ears out there. Music is "Where is Everybody?" By Nine Inch Nails.

-Geist)

1.
There's the lick and burn of copper and rust
in my cheek
and on my tongue.
It bleeds when I talk.
How appropriate.

II.
The surgery has made me a bitter man,
words have caused me to realize that.
The swelling apparently made me a monster,
but I already knew that
from you.

"I must be a bloody mess."
I remember gurgling to the nurse,
laid out hard, awake but not, numb and blank in my empty space.
"Oh no, of course not," she whispered
as she wiped the crimson from my neck and face.

Bloody mess.
Good summation.
Alone.
So alone.
At least we're alone.

III
My mother, saint that she is,
insisted on taking care of the little cousins today.
They came in and saw me at my desk
and as I turned to face them
they simply ran away.

The inner turmoil has bubbled to the surface.
The conflict has become the man.
I can't make out just who or what I've become.
I don't know who or what I am.
Can I change this? Please?

There's a bit of the dead in me now,
(as if there wasn't already)
The bone of a dead man fills the gap.
"I had to use more than I expected to fill the hole."
The doctor said it happily, gaily, as if I was lucky to have a little extra cadaver inside me.

[The ghost comes back into my mind again.]

Well, thank you, Doc.

[And he's smiling.]

Thank you very fucking much.

iiii.

I stare intently at a mirror.

One.

Rmm.

It hurts to lift my lip.

One, two.

Rmmrgh. Ah.

The bastard is stubborn and filled with pus.

One two three four.

Four stitches. Hrgh.

The pain is overwhelming. My face is not meant to be touched.

So none of them are doing their jobs.

V.
I haven't dreamt in years.
Every time I close my eyes, it's black,
a soup of inky nothingness
for me to butterfly, breast stroke,
tread water in when I'm asleep and gone.

Last night, I had a dream.

I was punching myself in my face,
tearing at the gaseous lump on my side,
bashing the virulent pus and corrupted blood and dead people away from me as a voice sings,
I want this gone, I need this dead, I can't stand this many things in my head.
And all around me in the dark is a chorus chanting, yelling, screaming:

The old king is dead!

Long live the king!
I think the old king was normalcy.
Long live the king!
This new one must be inadequacy.
The old king is dead!

Well, then.

Long live the king!

Long live the king.