Nether Tether

How many of us are slaves to our dreams? Even when things seem to be moving forward and firing on all cylinders we can find ourselves trapped in the past or beholden to an unrealistic standard. The grass is always greener and even when content we can find ourselves treading water mentally. Forging the rivers of these dead dreams isn't always the safest thing we can do as we try to work on ourselves.

Nether

Dream state with clawed teeth

Deep tethers beneath

Fingernails chipped by high heat

Blisters at light speed

Tearing through the nether

With an eyeful in each arm

Rummaging through images

Still incomplete, I come undone

Outward facing, despair outpacing

Treading undertow swimming in place

Events displacing, tired of replacing

The fragile parts of this mental state

Contents settling, stillness besetting

Needing help with my resetting

Holding on to false hope regretting

How I was left disarmed and empty

Stone worth more than just romancing

Somehow this heart can't start forgetting

Spark malformed in starts and stops

Ignition transitioned to cold fusion source

Too timid to approach these portals

Critical mass a stillborn dream

Open hostility to gods artificial

True fealty sworn only to that singular flame

Sacrificial singularity

Nightly laying out this virtual reality

Altars of repeated self-defeat

Carving vistas into which I can retreat

Sailing West with cold hands wrapped

Into the eye of a storm I made myself

Death alive with quite a pulse

A ferry toll paid without a cost

Cords laid along the ocean floor

A bed of hydro-thermal flora

Communications spilled like oil

High pressure drilled into this core

Digital remorse

A love that makes this worse

Self-sustaining nuclear delusions

Still periodically atomic

Visual divorce

A visceral renewal of hope

Vaporizing the question

To find myself inquiring alone

Switching servers to read-only

Cycling solo in binaries of zero sum

Locked in a feedback loop of lonely

Some games are lost if only one