The Mind of The Aching Man

In The Hours of The Waking Man

      When I walk down the street, I hear people's footsteps, see their cars, and hear the bass from their speakers through my boots. I always find myself wondering what these people are thinking. What are they listening to through their loud, booming speakers? Where are they going in their finely pressed suits and lovely work blouses? What kind of life do they live? What kind of house do they have? Is there a driveway and if so, is it clean? What kind of things do they have? Are they prigs with expensive taste in wine and cutlery?  Are they women of toxic vile demure, who bat their false lashes at any man who will let them? Men who preen with snake-like grins who reek of expensively cheap cologne?

     People with money and power are the downfall of what I am. But what I am is still unknown. I could cannibalize hope and hostility, for I am their brother and an inexorable animal. I could treat them to a meal made of our mother, Love, and our father, Need. I could walk into my own room and see myself lying there. I could watch my chest rise and fall in steady breaths, listening to my own heartbeat, running my finger across my own flesh. And as soon as I felt my heart quicken and breathing go ragged, attack like a rabid creature and ravage that same flesh I, just a moment ago, thought pure and delicate. I could tear it apart like a magazine. Watch that special little light leave my teal eyes and see them go grey. I know I would wake later that night in cold sweat feeling a great pain in my head, only to look at my dull fingernails and see my own blood and skin.

     I feel self-aware to an extent that I wish I didn't. I feel everything that touches my skin, I feel everything as I digest, feel every nerve and bit of my brain. I feel everything. I want everything.

     I need everything.