Prickles in My Pie

My life would be so much better, so much sweeter, to say the least.
None of you, my vexing, nerve-rattling memories, are worthy to swim my mental seas.
So obnoxious and so wearying, so angering and so old:
No matter how much I tell you all to go away, you remain so fucking bold!

My obsessive thoughts . . . my vermin memories . . .
My every being's infestation—like perpetually taunting trees.

Somebody please help me ward them off,
But how can you ward off phantoms?
Mistakes I've done, and wrongs done to me,
I cannot let them go or perhaps they can't me;
I'm a riddle to myself;
I'm my own disease.

Madness is all it is,
Maybe amnesia is the only cure;
If only I could live one hour without any of you . . .
How it scares me that you increase with time impure.

I love life to its fullest;
I want to love it more.
I need this constant self-scolding and over-rumination of "how could I?" and "how could they's" to finally just cease and go away.
I try to tell myself "I'm beyond all this," but it is of no use;
I always come back full-circle, to my world of angst, regret, embarrassment, contempt, rage and self-abuse.

I've trusted the wrong people;
I've let the wrong people in.
Solipsistic naivety has been my ultimate sin.

But life could be so much better, so much sweeter, to say the least,
If I could just let all this go, and kill this inner beast.

Or maybe if I just learned to stop caring about the sheer idiocy in my past,
If I just shrugged my shoulders at every major or minor debacle that's ever, ever been hashed.

Ah, to be somebody else,
Perhaps that's the key:
Not to be so sensitive,
To give up a huge part of me.
To learn to forgive myself and others,
Quite the goal for sheer misanthropy.
Easier said than done,
But in the end it all amounts to none.

I have a life to lead here, and I hate wasting time.
But what do I do with all of you, you prickles in my pie?
How could I let you get the better of me?
Why won't you all just die?

This goddamn weight on my shoulders,
This brutal self-destruction from inside.
I must find a way to release you,
Or my time is nigh.

Striving Body

Through the wee hours of the morning light,
Rushing from track to track.
A strange, far-away land that feels like home to me,
Barely able to keep my eyes open on the final train heading back.

When I walk onto the platform at Okegawa Station,
I'm almost home again.
A night of sweat, laughs, disappointments and minor successes,
I have to crash again.

"Should haves," "could haves" and "might haves,"
There's nothing to regret.
Despite my torpid body,
My mind alert and set.

Heels aching through my black dress shoes,
This time no dead cicadas on the ground.
This time no crows cawing with the cry of a hundred zillion mornings,
My orange and blackness drifting through the quiet grey I've found.

To close my eyes in a healing sleep,
To drown the care for another day.
A pushing of my limits,
A blasting fatigue to wash away.

I watch myself get younger with age,
As my body gradually decays.
Ah! To accept what life is - that is the goal of one who strives;
To long, crave, strive, climb and then slumber,
Like a sunset in a devil's a eye.