the two are becoming one 6/9/20

schizophrenia is an intimate partnership, 

from within

a dialogue 

for a third party of self to overhear

a witness to the topics of struggle engaged

no so much to define the topics dialogued and debated

but to delve into the characters 

presenting as self

this depth of the self intimacy 

that could hardly reach for words

and the emotional assignments that bleed out

into the surround of personal existence

I am a third-party therapist to myself

I keep privates notes 

that I don't share with the two of them

I have an ongoing sympathy for both

they each are train-wrecks and chalices 

journeys as searches 

and personal holy grails

each to their own

of what drives them 

against what draws them

all that is common within them

exists as yet unidentified

as in, 

I wear and tear what you look like

as you feel so foreign 

but intimately are my kin

thematic as heartache can ever render

my recognition of these two

goes on beyond what they are each saying

I am not hearing for sidedness

as for these mind-states 

in pursuit of their own grounded-ness

I am the evolutionary outcome or outcast

the bead-work of each heartbeat 

for their shared presence

destines and defines me

I am but the flame

to their wax and wick struggles

they will never know of me

for the burn that they offer

is my aliveness being spent

for me to go on as light

while the two of them 

grind away at existence

I take from each of them

their cross-current conversational blessedness 

from callousness to contentiousness

as if flint against steel

their burn-down is my upliftment

I go as spirit

from where the two  

are becoming one . . .