The Edict Of Depression
Saturday and Sunday has blurred into one.
I spent time in a bar, walking the streets,
or in my small, one room flat, drinking rum.
I hardly remember what I had to eat.
I cannot recall the point where I became
the person who lives here in this existence.
Not sending Christmas or birthday cards is lame.
I become exhausted instead of tired, without resistance.
Things rarely start & stop at identifiable points.
Life tends to shade from one state to another.
To evolve, then dissolve, to grow like moving joints,
then fade & fall away—- like all others.
Books and poems with their words hide this.
With their quantized approach to reality.
With their pretence that emotional starts & stops exist.
That you can be in one state, then another, callously
refers to a life that is in one continual flux.
Yet, it all blends together, like a mental storm.
Nothing stays with me, except my tortured gut.
This is a perpetual hell into which I was born.
Alcohol just rounds off the sharp edges.
Things roll along easier when one is blotto.
I never give money or make any pledges.
Just to half-heartedly ‘ maintain,’ is my motto.
Nothing to look forward to. The past is a blur.
I live in an existence that is like a fog.
Don’t ask me where I’m going, I’m not sure.
I pass out each night and sleep like a log.
In the morning, nothing has changed.
No one is concerned.— No one cares.
I guess there is no one else to blame.
Loneliness is a state that is impossible to share.
———————————————R. W. Johnson—–(2015)