Literary Exercise #14--A Rebirth Constituted In the Lower Parts of Man

"With every passing second comes a second chance..."

When I'm Jekyl-n-Hydeing these streets, its hard to imagine the damage powerful fingers will imprint upon your neck. I leave my mark on you, and your death is the hangover I just can't seem to shake...it's the antidote that only makes sense in hindsight, it's the passions buried until society or something better stirs them to the surface. It's not enough that I have to travel these ghoul-infested subways, and walk down streets with more than a second thought to whirl around and face my deepest and darkest fears--I have to live with your lifelessness, your utter refusal to buy into my deadly game...and at what costs you'll keep me from winning.

Oh Jehovah! Save me! Make me turn and take my murderous thoughts away...cause this is the path that only despair travels, and salvation is in the opposite direction.

The second measure, and the rhythm begins to pick its beat and hammer it in my ears. I can't think rationally, and I can't think right--the night sounds are too dense for concentration, I start to writhe my fingers back and forth in my pockets--hysterically, wondering about the humanity and the dark-sided laughter that sees this as a pleasant sport. If only I could pull out my ears--stop my senses from their receptivity to such evil stimuli.

Oh, would it be that this is only an aberration of a pleasant bygone world that will return with the sun...instead of illuminating the carnage wreaked and havoced on the poor souls of the night.

Please, please let it be past. Let the present fold in against itself and cancel out my actions. Let the future come and rapture me from this horrid state--let it claim me with four poles and interlocking bars and protect me from myself.

Now, see, now see this wild and wretched life--moment by moment of insanity and then a prayer for something less strenuous on my nervous system.

Oh Jehovah! Come near! Come near in a book written with holy words or a presence undefiled by static spikes of abnormalities. Pyschopathic demons await those who follow the way away from your heart, and I fear that my own is beating to a different theme and mandate.

Oh Jehovah! Abba Father! If one who was crucified screamed your name in utter anguish, let me be another that echoes his cry and ask that my cup be taken from me. True, true, you did not from him, but I am weaker, my spirit darker, my hopes dimmer on my own. My flesh is tingling, crawling from the very idea of consequential retribution. I am not my own lamb, nor do I pretend to be un-spotted and un-smeared. I am hideous, I am disfigured, I recoil first from myself before others do the same--let me not be the sacrifice, let me not be the lesson learned by others as disparaged as myself--let me be redeemed.

See, see now, that in the morning I'll forget about the whole of this. See that I will straighten my collar and press the last wrinkle out of my pants, and while I work with the requirements of the day, press the last worry from my mind. See, see now that I won't even call to you to bring such a horror back, or even think such things exist or that I'm in peril of them. See how I will turn myself from you again--from the guilt, from the unnecessary inconvenience of your pragmatically-impractical demands. See how I will go with what works, what's tried, what's true, at least with enough truth to sliver myself through my obligations and skirt around the painful festering in my heart. See how I won't believe...anymore. See how I'll turn my back, only to look back as a face in the crowd...a face with evil and anger and malice and hate and dark things creeping along the taut lines and dark shadows under my eyes. See how I'll be utterly and totally lost. See how I'll have taken that path, the boar-run of despair, without even putting up a fight. And hear my prayers:

Oh. Jehovah. I want to. I wish to.

Change.