Noel Negele

I Fell

Spend three days homeless
in the unforgiving modern world
and you’ll have an idea 
of what courage means

Step into the homeless shelter
step out
because it’s less of a nightmare 
to spend the night on a bench
in a park

I find myself employed
but without a roof on my head

A fresh hell
I feared since I was little
when I saw my tendencies
and predicted the trajectory 
of my decline 
with a mathematical accuracy 

Either prison
or grave
or homelessness 

I suppose 
I fell into the 
lesser evil

I pack my stuff
I buy a plane ticket
I turn what’s left 
of my digital balance
to cash

I travel to the third world country
I escaped from when I was a child

With no plans 
and no hope
and no appetite to talk

Debts lead to suicides

The faces of people 
on their first day of homelessness

The faces of people
being the audience of
their own sudden
and helpless demise 

The human decline hides another evil:

madness

some people were like you 
until they weren’t 

Some people turn mad 
without realising it
in the midst of their life span

It is my biggest fear.

To be poor
To be defeated
and depressed 
and to wonder if you have it in you
to go against life 
for another round—
these things I can face 
and I can face the possibility
of suicide as long as it’s my choice
but madness terrifies me 
more than death 

Mine or the death 
of my loved ones

Madness is unspeakable horror
it is your soul navigating 
a maze with no exit
It is death before death 
it is the worst type of loneliness
and the deepest sense 
of being lost

No one ever gets found
when mad 

I step into my fathers house with
groceries for the week
because he is an old unrecognised
artist with a daily food insecurity

I argue with him
because he says I failed

it is true 
I did fail.

My demons 
won.

But he failed too
once upon a time 

To tell him he was a ghost
when I was a child 
is meaningless so I don’t say it.

Oh father I think inside
my skull, I’ll probably like you more
when you’ll die
and I’ll romanticise you 
from our shared bitter memories.

What’s the point?
Arguments. Family arguments.
Nobody ever understood me
and I never blamed them for it
for I never understood my nature either.

I sit down on an 80’s soviet made couch 
and I put pen on paper 
and I write

“Rock Bottom
(Or the book of 
the great self loathing).

In the morning my father goes to 
an easy job somebody 
found for him.

They owe him three months
of pay
or so he says.
It is believable.
Around these parts
you work and hope 
for a payment .
Often times you never get it
and there’s no one to turn to
but a pistol 
and an all-in attitude.

Me?
I write a book in second person
and I see through the window
of this living room 
a sun that feels like an enemy

and down the street
I hear laughter 
even though the whole 
neighbourhood is broke and distressed
some people laugh 

some people
will laugh while their house burns down

Some people 
never envisioned 
a big picture 
so that when that picture shatters 
it makes no difference to them

I once had ambitions
that decreased to aspirations
that decreased to hobbies
that became nothing at all
but a memory 
I remember at times 
with a bittersweet fondness
and a recollection in retrospect
that they were naive 

You have to look down 
on the failed dreams of your past
otherwise they haunt you

I think:
Of course you would never be a writer.
You never had anything to say 
anyway.

Some dreams
will work as weights 
holding certain people down
crippling their chances with their future.

You can’t just be good enough
anymore 
because that is not good enough

You have to be spectacular 

but even still
even if you’re the most amazing firework
there is
nobody will know
until someone launches
you into the sky

It’s hard to know
when to gamble
and when not to.

Hope is such a dangerous thing.

I look on my piece of paper
that has a few lines on it

drinking wine but with no
self pity anymore
for it was consumed
a long time ago

starting with: 
“I remember when I first hated you as a person,
It is when you were fourteen. Since then that hatred grew and grew and after a while there was never a feeling of disappointment for your actions— disappointment is something you feel when you care about someone. I stoped caring about you two decades ago.

But my hatred for you 
grows stronger every day.”

I cook good meals 
and look outside the window 
in the afternoon
knowing my fathers voice 
will sound between the walls
any minute 
and stare at the asphalt five stories down
and reminiscence

I used to have panic attacks.

Used to go to the ER
and seek help
overwhelmed by a terrible feeling 
of perishing
because I was afraid
of dying

and in those early mornings
when I would get released
by those hospitals 
still hazy from the sedatives 
I’d see the grey sky
as night was turning to day
and think 
maybe this time you can do it different

I don’t have panic attacks any more.