The Old Me

By Kyle Conley

[When this poem was  originally published (on April 15, 2020), the lines between “Life’s too short to pick out flaws” and “Yes I stole a pill...” were inadvertently omitted. With some embarrassment, we apologize to both author and reader for this egregious mistake. The omitted lines were restored on May 12.]

Woke up just now to the sound of pouring rain
my mind racing and I can’t relieve the pain.
Things aren’t the same. Looks of disdain
everywhere I look, with their feeble minds focused
on the trash you think I took.
They bit your hook.
But there’s more.
You don’t like it? There’s the door.
I’m about to tell the tale of things you should’ve known before.
I’ve spent 29 years in a fight with myself.
Sent a team of head doctors off scrambling to their shelf
for a cure to the fear that I constantly feel
and the reason all these people wanna wreck me
while I heal.
So I’d steal
and consume every drug I could find.
Just a snatcher for a catcher of the nightmares in my mind.
You see, my brain’s been defective
since the day I was born.
Just a pleasant little gift
from two lovers that were torn
apart with anger, drug abuse, thievery and lies
and their never-ending issues lit a fire to my skies.
I thought passiveness and bribery were tokens of love
and that God himself was laughing at me far up above.
I lived in a forest of pain and you thought you could plant a tree?
Well, you only knew the old me.

Countless ones around me I’ve abused.
Mindless while I used, beating up myself until I bruised.
I refused
to believe I was meant to breathe air,
until I saw a man I always hated kick away a chair
and hang there.
Dead
to the world and to me.
Then instantly my hatred was as far as could be.
For me?
Life’s too short to pick out flaws
by sending people after you, one by one?
My world’s already ruined, but you had to have your fun?
You don’t get to throw a stone
at a former druggie struggling for his life just to atone.
You’re alone
in that fight.
I’ve got nothing to hide.
Why would I admit my guilt
and then attack you?
Pride?
What are we, 12?
That’s the best you can do?
You think my time is best spent finding ways to pull a trick on you?
So I’ll ask you one time now, just how angry can you be?
You only knew the old me.

Every thought’s a burden to my cortex.
Caught up in a vortex,
but your thoughts will never be my core hex.
That’s me, and that issue is mine.
Want time on stage to act in rage
and finally cross the line? Fine.
Here’s some fuel for your flame.
So be content while I repent to every sin to my name.

Yes I stole a pill, then I had myself committed.
Yes I spent my 20s like a zombie, heavy lidded.
Yes I’ve lost a lot of jobs, my anger is a curse
Yes there’s camera footage of my hand inside a purse.
Yes I’ve lied to get my way and yes it often worked.
Yes I’ve got a nation of opponents that I’ve irked.
Yes I barely graduated, college was a joke.
Yes I found the only way to function was to smoke,
and choke.
Tempted by the glamour of a pill.
Yes I fought with family members, fighting with them still
But chill.
There’s many ways to change a life,
like confronting someone one on one,
not pulling out a knife and flaying them
in public,
for fun and for sport.
You hold a grudge and yet the judge
took my side in the court.
So report, what’s been troubling you? Why all the shade?
We all have vicious demons but this time I’ll be your aid.
I’m sorry, and I’m thanking you
you’re the one that finally set me free
because you helped destroy the old me.

Copyright © 2020 by Kyle Conley Kyle Eugene Conley is an author and poet from Jefferson City, Missouri. He hopes to publish his first book of poetry, The Vicious Kind, and several children’s books by the end of 2020.