No Shore I & II

This is not a night; it is a sunken Eternity.

This is not a room; it is a horizon-less mirage.

A door-less, four-walled... thing.

What is the time? I do not know

No watch, no clock. It is “no-a-clock”.

My “heart”... is not a heart. It is an old machine that operates unnoticed with a weary workman's efficiency. It is a steady, but undetectable purposeless clanging... against the rusted hull of a ship surrounded by thousands of square miles of forgotten sea.

It was distractedly shoved-aside, marked redundant, and quickly forgotten.

There is a calm that arrives as soft and unnoticed as early Autumn, after Humiliation's ever-hungry pack of hyenas have ripped the flesh away, and crunched the bones to powder.

There is a stillness and clear truth, that is somehow truer than all other truths, after Regret and Sorrow have incinerated Desire, and gently-but-firmly pinned Obsession to the bottom of a pail filled with warm water; until the kicking and thrashing have ceased.

There is a useless wisdom derived the swift and irrevocable delivery; It is perhaps like a disposable moment of clarity in the last heartbeat of a life. A key that opens no door. Sky-cracking thunder in a world gone deaf.

And after existing in a conscious state of extinction; where to?

Nowhere.

“Where are we headed?”

Nowhere.

So, go. Go Nowhere. When your here is Nowhere, and your Nowhere is all you can see... then you've arrived. You're here.

Nowhere.

No need to look for welcome, and no need to despair when it does not come. It will not come. Your only company are the sound of air and the microscopic monsters who run past the farthest corner of your periphery.

There are no enemies here. No rivals, regulations, rates, time-limit, or minimum order. This is not life in lifetime; not breath-to-breath as causal link to eventual no-breath-after-breath.

Life has color; textural reference. Mortality's unceasing forward march.

This is not life. This is life on pause. Wheels turning in deep-space.

And still? That poor heart...

Like a dog struck by a car, dragging a broken leg, lungs filling with blood...
Limping back to the house so it can crawl under the porch and die unseen.

That heart, seemingly immune to lessons taught, steadily clangs away against the rusted hull of a ship cast-adrift.

Someone to love, someone to love me.
Someone to love, someone to love me.
No direction, no stars, no daylight to come.

No shore... alas.

All born dislocated. Amidst great distraction... but nothing keeps you from yourself for too long.

In the heart of night, when men quietly sweep the floors of empty dance-halls, and the lonely walk back to silent rooms...

There is no Shore.

When isolation turns you into “The Only One”, and you become inescapable, and no words can be employed to explain or rationalize; when something inside you endlessly suffocates, dies continuously, starves and convulses...

There is no Shore.

When someone's touch becomes narcotic, but provides no relief... or gets you off, or out of your mind...

There is no Shore.

If I knew a name to call out, I would; even though I know I am mute. And if there was a name to call, a cage of fleshed ribs to claw and hold on to, mutually Desperate arms to embrace me, a hot mouth on mine... it would not be Relief, or the end of Panic... it would only be a temporary resting place, where the annihilating vacuum of constant life would remind me:

“There is no Shore.”

Two people in a darkened room. Two respirating carcasses, imagining other faces onto the one they're with; each miles away in thought...

No Shore.

People take years decorating the blank space: Addiction, marriage, children. They spend their lives working, to buy things to fill in the space... but the more you put in, the more you see:

There is no Shore.

“Drive faster”, “Make more noise”, “Tell yourself you're in love”: Desperation's never-ending mirage.
Churches are built; Pyramids are left in deserts; Wars are fought...

But there is no Shore.

Future generations will struggle with ever-decreasing resources. They will read about the past with amazement and disbelief; and wonder if their ancestors ever found it.
After so much decimation, conquering, and culture-erasing purges... to clear all the sight-lines and quiet the air.
They will see, that those who came before them ripped the World to shreds, then huddled together in fear by firelight. Turned on each other in distrust, ran wild intoxicated by ignorance, found that the voices of the Evil and the Righteous sound the same... because they were...

And no leader or prophet was able to lead the way to the Shore.

In my sleep, I turn and grind my teeth. I know the Truth, but fight it. In waking-hours, I turn my head from the blank space and the Past... and wait for the Night.

For empty streets to walk Lonely upon; Small rooms and Solitude...
For wind that rustles tree-branches; for Amnesia and Darkness...

For there is... no Shore.