The Haunting

I'm waiting to see what happens when
one's steam for living runs totally dry.
The water in the boiler's gone and
there hasn't been any fuel to burn for
years. What's going to give without
the pressure? Some part of me is
already caving in--the problem is I
can't tell which part. Just like I
can't tell which part is so maladjusted
as to necessitate such an impossibly
long dry spell, which part is so ugly
as to not even be seen, which part is
so unlovable as to not be thought of
as needing love. How many years
of hoping for someone to cherish,
hoping without merit and beyond all
reason, before a man turns into a ghost,
morphs into the ghost of his own haunting?
I'm haunted by the parts of me that
are dying from atrophy, ill-fated dreams,
haunted by the sound of relentless
solitude, even in the presence of others.
What does eternal solitude
sound like, you might wish to know.
It's the most overwhelming silence you've
ever heard, so enormous sounds are
either sucked in or magnified to be
torturous and shrill. It's the sound of
a single heart beating forever, no way
out, not way in. This simple pulse,
thud-THUD, thud-THUD, is
my only soundtrack anymore. As
far as I can tell, the beats are what they'd
call Jungle. Stranded here, then, in a
dark, anonymous jungle, sobbing without
restraint, without dramatic circumstances,
without a clear explanation, without end.
If no one's there to hear you, are you really
crying?

(2007)