Real Words

My false reality is a normal man, owned by financial security, slave to the essentials and more, much more. My desired existence is that of an artist, a wordsmith, a bard, a writer with potential beyond measure and degrading limitations. Lately, the two overlap and become one for sake of survival... Concrete floors, blistered feet, and a fear that I have given up on the dream, the one goal that keeps me above mediocre. Though my effort surpasses most destined general laborers, I feel the normalcy taking hold of and overshadowing the life I need, the existence that calls to me like a lover on the nights when settling seems too simple. And I break my back and bruise my ego so life does not implode before me. Still, I feel the disgust in my core, in my being, and all the signs point to acceptance of truth. The rejection letters, the sugar- coated no, and the silence that lingers past waking moments into the foundation of my nightmares... How do I compete with failure? A question that kills the confidence obtained over years of painting my soul on blank paper. Should I be meant to be "average", Should I be destined to be a lost talent that never found the title I so desperately seek, Why do these words come to me so freely? Why do I bleed ink and bandage the wound in hours of devoted creativity that comes from nowhere less than a place that soothes like home to a veteran soldier? Do I lack conviction or skill? All the questions are there with no real answer to soothe my ache to touch the impossible. My life is in the hands of other's who label me as a waste of time for a paycheck... No insight into my work past a few pages, No knowledge of my struggle past a query. And the silence, the god damned silence, is a toddler seeing death for the first time. A constant and typical experience that breaks me down to a weeping infant prone to fear. Fear that is born of a man reaching for purpose but grasping only the cold emptiness of air stained by nothingness, the worst kind. The damage, is not for the fragile of mind or heart, and it lasts until it has reason not to. It's the kind of damage that rips asunder the very spirit of a man to the point of mental illness and a longing to lose the yearning. It hurts... Yet the pain acts as motivation to do more.. to "be" more...with no direction towards a first step to any path or road right for me. And the urge to give up multiplies to undeniable and unbearable reasoning... Like a victim to an attacker, Just a means to survive and acceptance of the shame of being broken in every way. Yet through it all, I work... Then I do what comes naturally... I cling to the hope that I am what I appear. I clench the idea that my words matter, And I survive on selling my time, my life for eating and living long enough to find my voice, the one that will hold their ears and capture their eyes in the gaze of passion. My reality sits on my chest and rides my slowly sinking shoulders... It's the nightmare made too vividly but seems essential to this false identity. And though this is the only life I can touch now... It is the words that still remain as real to me as the first moment I discovered them... And for this reason, I swallow my agony and continue to try past the hidden tears of disappointment. The tears that I fear may someday confuse my eyes about where I am and where I want to be.