“You’re fucking nothing”. So says my own mouth and fevered eyes like a shot across the bow of my own temple. Over and over, though, I used to repeat it. And I would sit there in the mirror with hands clutching bathroom sinks until I believed it, or until I was crushed enough that it didn’t matter if I did or not. I’d spit the words, I’d hiss them and I embodied a spoken douche. I did their work, I brought myself to my knees and I kicked myself in the face as my jaw fell to pieces from the weight of tears. I hated myself because I was nothing and I had no proof of that other than that this is what was told to me.

Those terrorists tinkering around with my adolescent heart didn’t have to do much: just fill me with a little propaganda I already swallowed and set me loose to jihad some part of my heart. It sounds stupid now, but I could walk into any of the villages of my body of organs populated with all these memories of myself and budding courageous warriors that were going to fight my fight someday and the little shadows of the kind of lovers that I wanted, and I’d blow them to fucking bits on a dime.  No leaflets dropped, just ‘1, 2, 3, eat shit.’ And it took me years to apologize. To myself, to the little bits of  legacies of me that never got up off the ground again. It was an eon before I could look myself in the eyes and be like ‘Fuck man, there’s some sex appeal there. You’re a sordid little fellow, but you’re all right.’

So, I’ll be damned if I let anyone tell me that these days. I know my worth because I rebuilt it block by block from nothing. I laid the foundation for all these tall buildings I jump off–these days joyriding my mind, not deathdiving.’ I won’t live a life on my knees, because I learned how to run through urbanscapes plagued by shootouts. I dodge bullets Matrix style, and you’re just a fuckhead for even trying to shoot. It took me forever to gain the courage to call you a fuckhead, and if you take that away from me only then will you know my ferocity. I enjoy all the little sinews of flesh I wrap myself in now, and the dark look of eyes that see both the wasted time in the desert and the promise land ahead. I don’t shoot myself in the temple anymore, my mind is my own goddamn temple.

I’m my own saviour. It took me centuries to feel that.

Catch a free download at the Soundcloud link.

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