Self-Defeating Prophecies - a poem

A compliment goes a long way to incite a rush of love to the brain,
but what do you do when you can't forgive yourself a moment
that transpired when you felt inferior for your compliments. That the things
touchstoned on your soul culminate in iterations of refusal,
that you are doomed to repeat your sins because the holy ghost
passed on you for doubting the air you breathe. Seem counter-intuitive

and is for the most part, but the battered shore does create opportunity
for the pecking of sea birds to collect and swallow down the gullet
and digest whole those things that are most sensitive to your disposition.
That desperate times and desperate measurements are taken on fragile
hands, and feet, and eyes, and toes, and as the millions of microscopic
bugs eat at rotting you are seldom safe from deceiving yourself

that you are a worth a moment of loving. Compliments are not a cure-all
for the insensitivity one has for oneself as past transgressions are gunshot
wounds that were never cleaned, and a bullet still fills your blood with poison.
So, storm clouds send lighting strikes to that metal garbage embedded in deep
tissue. Take the buses home, and dream of silently ending everything because
of the pain you continue to cause, but won't because you always want to believe
you can do better, but do you ever do better, and the sound of absolute silence
is more deafening than the pain of being who you are. So you take compliments

as comforting stuffed animals, like teddy bears, and her soft touch is a tourniquet
for your bloodied wound, but you still don't know if the rot on your mind will ever
clear up, no matter how hard you try, and you know it is good for writing out willfully
all those wistful and painful things you can think of, but what is it about good times
that makes you fear more than they will come to an end, and bad times will replace
them like storm clouds encroaching on a vacation intended for sun. When walks in rainy
streets is paramount for clearing the screaming in your head that you are not enough

for the compliments that are paid you. Talent is something that you have, but is it
worth all the times you've caused tears to flow out of eyeballs, and do you have it in you
to be better, and not stuck, for you are always stuck in an ebb and flow of tide pools,
its okay to feel scared, but when you are constantly scared do they think that it is
how you will always be. God said let their be light, but he meant it for the sun,
and it was so, but not for the human soul, as Eve bit pit deep into forbidden fruits
and so doomed the human race into this dark role, but even if its not believed so,

the stickiness like gum under a dinner table surface is there branded on your soul,
and at some point you blame and blame and blame your fractured brain for being lost
to anger issues, and anguish issues, and absolution issues, because you cannot absolve yourself
and your writing is begotten as this constant war to come to terms of who you were,
who you are, what you want to be, and what you never got to be, regretting and regurgitating
the last sensible thing you thought you knew. And as mother bird feeds baby spit up
cornmeal so goes that I continue to speak aloud the curses that were spoken on me,

but I try, with help of loves, and help of medial sciences for psychological relief,
and my soul wants to cry for who knows better what I have been through and how hard
it is not to feel inadequacy fester inside that bullet hole, self-inflicted, and demanding
an answer to how to be better, and always striving to be better, even with broken legs,
and fractured fingers, and lost direction, the climb is treacherous, the climb is steep,

the pool at the bottom is littered with sharks already high on the taste of your blood
but you persist because of the way she smiles at you, and you know you are okay, you are
better than the sum of your mistakes, and you believe her when she says your worth it,
and you believe her when she says forever, and forever, and forever,

but you also know you hate to see her cry,
and maybe you can never full forgive yourself
for the mistakes of hurt and anger cast upon myself
but seldom does someone look at you with wholeness
the way that she looks at you wholly.

in effect, to sum it up,
breathe deeply,
and forgive yourself,
because you are not the sum
what was learned,
and you can become a sum
of something,

something that resembles calmness, even as storms rage, for even a hurricane has an eye.