Reciprocal Delusions of the Damned

“A madman staring at perpetual night, A spirit raging at the visible, I breathe alone until my dark is bright.”
— Roethke
She fell in love with me early on because of what she considered my “esoteric” appeal and the potential she thought she saw in me.
She liked the words I wrote, she liked the art, and the way my heart bled freely in the dark.
She fell for those worn-out boots and that rawhide flask of soul forever placed in the ass pocket of my stained jeans. She was curious about that battered old rucksack packed with poetry and pain that hung heavily from my shoulders.
She was fascinated by the allegory in the tattoos on my arm and the hardback vintage books wrapped tight in a leather black belt that I carried to that dingy little dive bar at the edge of town.
She said it did something to her, I was somber in many ways yet pure, she saw it in the language of my bloodshot eyes. I was unlike the others, she said, I didn’t give a damn about what most cared for. She liked that.
Certain nights, I’d get good and drunk and sit there on that wooden bar stool with her pretty ass on my lap and recite an old Dylan Thomas poem with a deep drawn-out roaring voice much like his:
“Chastity prays for me, piety sings, Innocence sweetens my last black breath, Modesty hides my thighs in her wings, And all the deadly virtues plague my death!”
She’d applaud and lick my face — the only goddamn soul in the joint amused by my poetic madness.
I liked her for that. I did. But I never truly understood who she thought I was. I tried to warn her about the misconceptions she held, but she just clung tighter to the man she thought she knew.
The idea of someone, the longing for someone, is always more intoxicating than the actuality of them. As Nietzsche said, “ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.”
I tried to warn her about the secret life of her idealistic imagination. She’d just kiss me and tell me to stop it. I love you for YOU and who you are.
Who am I? As the months went on, my intense need for solitude started to take its toll on her.
The sad songs of Townes Van Zandt rubbed against her Sunday Funday sensibilities.
In time, she hated that the art was a priority and she refused to reckon with that ragged old shadow that engulfs the core of who I am.
It pissed her off when I skipped out on the cocktail parties, the beach trips, and all the other socialite ventures of her little black dress life.
It was impossible for her to fathom how a man could dwell so comfortably alone in the back alleys of the perpetual night.
How a man could go on smoking those cheap cigars and typing away the fleeting days of his weary life in the smoky haze of oblivion.
How could he? Now she throws ashtrays at my head when I come in at 3am, and she takes a knife to the paintings, and laughs at the poetry as mascara tears stream down her sad, lovely face.
I tried to caution the little high-heeled beauty numerous times before the distress inevitably took her to that demented place they all go.
She ignored my pleas. So tonight…
I walk out the door for the last time.
I hear a wine glass shatter against the closed door behind me. A deathly scream haunts the silence. A black cat saunters down the alley. The new moon has disappeared behind the gathering clouds.
Abandoned, once again to the cold winds of fate on the front stoop of life, here I am, an exile in the dark, my collar up, fading into what’s left of the lamenting night.
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