Traversed A Gendered Landscape

Stark and hardened is the visage of a man who stands stoic and scarred with hands marred from the toil of his existence ••••• Once embodied more than this worn leather-skinned exterior dried hide cracked and calloused with wounds salt-packed callously ••••• no one peered below the skin ••••• Now a set of primitive passions that supercede innate compassion his heart merely the pulsating bulging his forearm veins as pick meets barren ground digging a ditch to lie down in ••••• his grave ••••• The production of which unearths vitality whilst burrying decades of lived reality no soul mourning at the funeral pyre most alive at his most self-inflicting he lives in dying ••••• in killing himself ••••• Slowly Softly Silently save for battlecries and braggadocio or perhaps violently in a blaze calmed by the cold steel barrel ••••• Existence non-intrinsic to be determined by alpha council a façade of warpaint smudged haphazardly on a frightened boy whose slights of step land him in pits of feral wolves they shred him to loose their fetters of fear ••••• and paranoia ••••• A mirror of insecurity hangs within a piercing glare scares him and shatters into jagged shards that dare him to slice his throat as he slithers a noosed tightrope ••••• Striding in tightly laced boots numb to the constrict ever weary this conscript jumping from the war machine into the construct ••••• given a harness ••••• Of rachet straps wrapped tightly around the chest and fastened to flesh which snap back fast and devour slack their geared teeth click, clack until ribs crack muting the gasps exasperating as his lungs collapse ••••• Panic attacks relapse substance abuse substitutes for a life once substantial now turned to refuse ••••• symptoms of affliction Masculinity