I really like this one, even if it’s very dark. I summised it at the time with a little disclaimer on Facebook telling my friends that I was okay, and that I was just trying to use words to “paint picture of a feeling I have sometimes.”

This painting is pretty vivid to me, and the with the benefit of retrospect, clearly about my weight, prior to losing 67kg in 2009/10.

The title is based on what happens when you import an MP3 without filing it. Not being able to put a name to something, basically.

It also represents a bit of a turning-point in terms of structure. It’s not as much of a rant as previous poems that were this honest.

[TRACK 01 – ARTIST – SONG 01]

There’s nothing I can put into myself to get this out of myself,
Using my quiver of words, I can shape a description of just about anything,
But how do you accurately describe nothing?
A hole?
A vacuous void with corrosive edges?

There’s a particle of anti-matter in me,
Imploding ever inward upon itself,
Drawing anti-mass as it sucks everything there is
Into its ever-growing centre of everything there isn’t

Maybe this isn’t pain.
Maybe this is just life,
And I don’t like the taste of it.

Things just don’t seem to fit, I suppose;
Life like love like faith like clothes.
Striving for the closest fit possible,
Knowing that there isn’t a tailor to hem this feeling.
When the waist is big enough,
The legs are too long.
Fabric doomed to split from the beeping of the barcode.
It’s just a question of time,
And I’m slowly running out.
A steady subtraction of self from self

The will to carry on.
The will to carry this.
These armies are not evenly matched,
And the shock-and-awe is working.

I see the humans.
They struggle with the mountains they climb,
The so-called battles they face,
The pieces of puzzles they move into place.
That part is easy.
It’s the breathing that kills me.

If I could keep my blood warm,
I could run up Kilimanjaro naked,
I could take it.
But for now I have no choice but to leave it unfixed and fake it.

False hope or no hope?
What a choice to make.
And I cannot drown the question.
I cannot smoke it, snort it, drink it, eat it
Or eloquently articulate it away any more.

A magic trick. A slight-of-hand.
The illusion of a proud, courageous, able-bodied man.
Everyone is fooled.
Everyone except for me.
Everything except for this.

Yield for nothing.
Strive for something.
And time is running out.

Gord Laws, 2008