wide berth

i've opened too many doors, stepped into portals and then shied away from them at the last second, being the coward that i am. i want to know the truth. i want to know myself. but i'm too afraid. i need distractions. television. books. muzak. without these things, i am lost, immersed in my own head--the unbridled currents of mental clutter and intellectual smut, crashing on the shore, never coming to a halt. the best i can do is to just try to block it out, pretend it isn't happening. but i can only do this for so long. and then i am forced to look within, as if held at gunpoint. self-inflicted introspective terror. there are sensations, feelings, thoughts which i find impossible to communicate in any coherent manner, but which i feel compelled to jot down, as if they were divine. significant. vital to my conception of myself and my ostensible intrinsic self-worth. alas, the missing link. the key. to what? to more doors. more unexplored rooms. i'm too afraid to step out of the darkness, to find the light, and watch it pass me by. sun-up, sun-down. an endless cycle. it never stops. the light is transient and fleeting, like convictions, like beliefs, like self-conceptions, like your own reflection in a mirror. the only constant in the world is that there are no constants. try as i might, however, i find it impossible to abolish what is essentially me. something seems to stick. whether through nature or nurture, there is a self and it manifests itself in cringe-worthy revelations. idiosyncrasies which i can map out from old journals to the present.

neither beginning, nor end,
the shadow extends,
from this world,
to the next,
it never forgets,
and try as i might,
to abolish these quirks,
something endures,
outside me, it lurks,
i am one who's bound to you
and everything
is cut in two
in lines we make up on the spot
who's to say where it's not
it's not a matter of
looking within
but taking it all
for what it's worth
and learning when to
leave it alone
to accept the life
it's etched out as its own