Retching Monologue

Basking in the hellfire, there I lay guzzling a venomous cask, drenched in pangs of sorrow and grief, all too aware that an end was coming.
But there I stayed, immobile and unyielding—cemented in place by an unwavering propensity for sentimentalism. What I was is who I am, and as the cycles of time turn in their predictable paths, a clog comprised mostly of a yearning for what never was threatened to disrupt this natural order. But still I stayed there, slumped in place—a man with purpose, a man with motivation.
What kept me there? Steadily regressing back to where I started. What is it that can force a man who sees his bleak end to sow and nurse the wretched seeds from where his demise stems? Could fear be a strong enough force to halt the clear sighted?
Some drink away the pain. Others douse themselves in
tears. We see life as suffering, claw for a semblance of a happy memory, but what chance is there for a happy life when we neglect the good and see ourselves only as victims of a cold, hard world?
I am not a sad man. I am a man who met for the last time the bleak void left by that deceitful devil hope. Those dreams so naïvely considered inevitabilities in youth ferment in that venomous cask and are the bitter contents of that painful cocktail. But as a baby sucks a bottle dry, I drink until there is no trace left. And in that state, the gears cease to turn, and all that should have been but never was rushes past me.
It is now what cannot be. But as another bottle clatters to the floor, there is a feeling still there—not of hope, not of promise—a retching in the gut, a product of unease, a desperation to know whether the world I’d seen rise around me for so long was indeed the very one now rushing past me. So I grasp, I pray, I do all I can see it clearer, to hold it once more within my hands. I claw and, like a mist, it evades. Like a cloud it envelops me, its density suffocating, tightening in my throat, making sight impossible.
I am a broken man with broken dreams, both blessed and cursed with clarity. I pity those who cannot see. This life, this world, it always moves in sporadic motions, but in the end, always around. This world it spins and we go nowhere. They run, they writhe, and all for not. We have made a hell and here, in the world we made, our future rots, decomposes down to struggle and death. There is more to see and more to do. There is a life outside our deformed visions. Avert your eyes from this perverted creation. Choose a life away from the
hellfire.
But I fear for me it is too late. A solemn tale of bitterness and regret, sharpened by the knowledge that every step towards this fate was a choice I knowingly—perhaps not willingly, but knowingly—made. Now, here I am, in this muggy place on a much too warm day, the sun in all its blinding radiance obstructing the view of a clear blue sky.
But of course that doesn’t matter, because who I am is of no consequence. What little I’ve done is unremarkable. When I die, they will not mourn, they will not know. But mine is the story of countless others, sustained by a brew of ever more diluted truth, there for no real purpose other than to simply exist until there is reason to. I am a passive observer, watching my life unfold from behind a wall of impenetrable glass, completely aware, but unable to reach through and change. So on I go and here I rest, set alight not with the scorching flames of passion, but the low, burning embers of a gradual decay. And there are starts and there are moments. There is light somewhere there. But it’s grown faint; I don’t see it now. Perhaps like a phoenix I shall rise from the ashes, or perhaps I am just a man and this is it.