I saw the world shedding sparks of liveliness
The mere walls an oscillation of joyous reds and yellows
Confined space expanding
Youth and energy
Attempt and discovery
All the while a person a human person
Used me as an instrument of gratification
And I was too foolish to comprehend the truth
That one I knew to be an intimate friend
Was handling me as a baby handles a rattle
And in my selfishness I wanted nobody
To be displeased with me
All the while I said to myself I don’t want this
I wanted my tormentor to disappear
Even as I had learned to believe
That I was always in the wrong
That a friend and equal could not cause me torment
And even now the voice of guilt
Surely you exaggerate
You know you gave encouragement
How wrong of you to deliver blame
My other self addressing me in the second person
Blame recoiling in cognitive toxins
Polluting my writing with a one-sided account
But that one side is broken apart
And the cascade of error advances
Advances through erosion upstream
The childish poses that assume the aspect of truth
First the badass with only dismissal
For something so unhip as lovingkindness
And second the melancholic
When in fact the addiction to exaltation
No less than addiction to dejection
The facile recourse to artificial excitement
Drowns the capacity for simple pleasure
I thought I was faking it when I said I was sad
And now I must don the last exhausting mask
Of equable urbanity
And although it makes no difference
Who did the damage
The spiteful ghost the past never dies
And I’ve given free my share of pain
And I lack the linguistic skill
To conceal his gender
Hence the disclaimers the provisions the backtracking the diagrams
I remember his telling me what he wanted
He only wanted closeness he said
And I never doubted his sincerity
He wanted me to draw close to him
His reversal of attractiveness
An error of judgment a simple mistake
Perhaps
But why did he never wonder
What I wanted
Why did he not imagine that I wanted something
That I wanted peace
But then I never knew myself
And now I know the truth
That he believed that he had the power
That he held it to be true that he had the power
That he was right to exercise the power
To make me want the same as he
And wouldn’t it be pretty
If all our sorrow could be shown to have issued
From a single source
A single thoughtless moment
But did he realize then
Or does he realize now the harm he committed
And what harm have I committed
All the while half-conscious or less than half
There are those in the world
Objects of injustice
Whom injustice itself inspires to strength
While some other similarly objectified persons
Become so twisted with pain
That they devote their lives to causing pain
I of course fall in the insipid middle
Still I never blow the whistle
Still I find ways to punish myself
For the one true sin of cowardice
Though I have certainly punished others
No wonder then that memory
Retreats into abstraction
Prosey lines
Arbitrary lines
A colorless world
Without fragrance
Without rest
Blind walls
Without form
Without sense
Without dimension