beyond wit's end

"If you can keep your wits about you while all others are losing theirs, and blaming you. . . . The world will be yours and everything in it..."  Rudyard Kipling

it's best
to keep your wits
about you
when sailing
this turbulent sea

loving without breaking
singing without cracking
walking without falling

there are many
treacherous roads
and which one
to take?

am i to blame
when choices
lead me to painful ends?

should i have known?
could i have foreseen?

the first time i lost
it felt like my skin
was coming off
like i couldn't hold it
together
literally

as if i was melting
disintegrating
crumbling

all because i loved
what was finite

they lied
when they said
if i was good
nothing bad would happen

but somehow they keep
on believing
while self-deceiving

and i knock on walls
through which they cannot see
or hear
and i am
in the twilight zone

but i have lived
beyond
self-disintegration
heart-cracking
threatened annihilation

and survived
by wit and wisdom
but mostly love

love

they said it could
kill me

but i can do nothing else
or i would surely die