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New Age Propaganda
A poem about deluded romantic feelings. The kind that was never there to begin with. The kind that requires a diagnosis and medicine. The kind that ruins friendships. Where the mind goes at a hundred kilometers an hour straight into a wall. All that and then some poor decisions abetted by a poor of choice of confidant.
If only I had taken care of myself. If only I were better. If only trauma were introduced to a firmer mind. If only I’d stopped daydreaming. A man dreams to have everything when next to nothing is in clear sight.
Part of this is a reminder that there was something real. Even with its loss, I am grateful still.
What I felt for you was someone else’s
heroin that I let into my bloodstream.
Like a drug I’ve never taken,
I can only imagine. The clawing
sensation of wanting more of you was
never really in my castle. Propaganda.
The sort that rots the senses and poisons
thought. Reason and intellect suffocated
by the deluge of delusions where I almost
drowned.
Every sorry was a band-aid for the wounds
cut by my mistakes. Though this came
from somewhere. Pain, the kind that
sears the heart, comes from loss.
Yes, there was the yellow press. But I knew
my sources personally—behind the scenes even.
They were an agent of New Age Saturn. Spreading
falsehoods about your malice that never was. Though
I was the only captive audience. Targeted by virtue
of being an old friend
of Saturn and
its karma.
Behind all that was an elusive truth—
that needed time.
I spent time after our past conversations
tracing thoughts on paper. Finding sincerity.
Drawing my feelings out required more
caffeine than reason. The latter I lost.
Whenever you were irrational, in jest
and gesture, I’d smile. Knowing that you’d
leave an iota of thought and drive it down
like a nail. On the cross, my sins and memories
of the former came down like torrents of ill omens.
Signaling the end of everything
I ever wanted was a prescription.
Unwell. Maddeningly unwell was
what I let myself be because
of that new age propaganda.
And now, in grief, all I can do is count my debts.
Memories of you, which I was told to burn,
burden my soul like a Damoclesian knife
around my neck. Already wreathed in thorns, I
miss who we were—once friends.— Nico Santagoy