Coma Season

I know I am rusted metal scraping against pavements of forgotten cities. An unheard groan of a freezing pipe in a condemned building. I know, I know. Believe me - I know. I know my words vaporize and lose all meaning as they evacuate my mouth. I know that all the years spent, all the miles travelled, all the sleep lost... just time wasted. Time wasted! Like leaving a lamp burning in a room you're not using: a waste. What a horrible thing - time wasted. All the ravages of futility, inspiration's annihilating backhand. At the end of the trail, to find the pockets heavy with stones and fool's gold, the ribs cracked from the last cheap shot, and the heart hopelessly empty: what a waste. And even though this is the cheaply-woven fabric of my life, even though I am the hand that knocks unwelcomed and uninvited on doors of empty houses, the cultivator of insufferable misery, on hot endless nights of paranoia and ceaselessly unendurable obsessive repetitions of a life nailed to the ground by one foot of dulled cowardice and uninventive thought... in spite of all that, there was a time when I... when I thought something more than all this was in my grasp. There was a time when I could feel the ground underneath my feet and I walked forward into time instead of standing still, stranded in semi-darkness with skewed memories of the past to keep me. I don't remember when I pulled back. I don't remember when I called it a day. I don't remember when I slipped underneath the surface of life and ended up here. I don't remember. I don't know.