to be eaten by the bear

I wish to bear wounds with my music. I wish to breathe and bleed the bile of these notes, the phlegm that rises in my throat as I scream for higher, for higher, for higher--

And I do not even want higher. I want dexterity. I want scope. I want hush and thrum and beauty and I wish to bear wounds. I wish to assimilate a scar the size of my ego, across my lips. I wish my hands to be knotted and my jaw to be bruised and I wish that I cannot walk but for beating a rhythm, my leg jumping, jumping, jumping.

I wish to rest. I wish to exist only in time. I wish that I am immune to temperature and vilely hypersensitive.

A parody of creature. A piece of nature thrashed by the breeze. It is pathetic. It is disgusting. It should not be exhibited; it must be condemned.

I wish to bear the wound of the panic I must not speak, for fear of condemnation.

(And when that condemnation does not come, I harden further the shell of that scar.)

I wish to walk with perfect posture and inspire with the absence, from afar, of disease. Upon inspection, I am gnarled and I am changed. Let no one inspect; let no one need inspect.

Let it be seen. Let it be apparent. Let it be light and shadow and screams.

I wish to bear wounds. Tritely, I wish to bare wounds. I mandate that triviality be impossible and unthinkable.

This is what I wish. By my bow and my breath, I might only glimpse to the fractious note of having achieved it, just for one moment.

That moment, unstable. This desire, uncontainable.

I wish to bear wounds.

I wish to be wounded.

To eat and never be full. To smile and never feel joy.

To be a martyr. To be martyred, against my presented personality of will.

This, the only possible payment for a life divine. Exhaustion, the natural and singular conclusion to righteousness felt.

Somehow, it is a crime to be uplifted.

I wish to bear this wound.

I wish to be marked, by wear and hard work, of a worthiness to have lived as I have. If it could commute me, I should starve of all else. Only tones and chords and the unreachable.

I should learn patience, by failure. I should learn patience and simultaneously struggle, buck and toss, headlong against it, never content to solely fail.

Do it to them before they do it to you.

Confess your corruption, and act as though you have earned it.

I do not want higher. I only wish to be laid low, low, low.