The Doubt

Inspired by my jealousy toward men and women who still have belief even in the hardest tragedies.

The doubt feeds
The doubt consumes
It swallows me whole

The doubt burns
The doubt hurts
It never lets go

The demon of doubt
is worse than gout
A chronic condition
loathing submission
It's just hell on wheels
dining on the soul
for all of its meals

Man has been beat on
Man has been peed on
Man has been spit on
Man has been s**t on

Man has been punched in the guts
Man has been kicked in the nuts
Man has been fucked in the butt

But his overall belief has remained
untouched, unscathed, unblemished,
steadfast, rock-solid, a concrete pillar
that hasn't been weathered
that hasn't been eroded
that hasn't been worn away
that hasn't decomposed a shred

And if a solitary member
of the human experience
makes claims to the contrary,
they are the storytellers
they are the yarn spinners
they are the delusional ones
since the conclusion
is that obvious
is that blatant
is that manifest
is that transparent

Belief survives virally
since we virally survive

And the doubt is just
another belief, not a
shred divergent from
faith itself

And the faith feeds
as the doubt does

And the faith burns
as the doubt does

The faith is also a
chronic condition
loathing submission,
a being that feeds
on the soul for all
of its meals

And so the battle
rages inside with
total depravity and
predictable circularity

The doubt and
the faith at odds
until the mortal coil
is forever shaken away,
like a pair of cheap devices
purchased from a box store
once they meet the law of
gravity and the kitchen floor

The resulting mess is the state
out of the soul, polar opposites
sprinkled and strewn together
making a vague yin-yang pattern
that the world at large has come
to know on sight, like the Golden
Arches or the Christian Cross

Yin and Yang,
Salt and Pepper,
Doubt and Faith,

Dichotomy defined
by complementary
congruence, and
they react like
sodium and water
and can burn for
a lifetime if the
fuel is plentiful
enough

And they still feed
And they still burn
And it will cease
at some point

When and where
are left up to the
agent in question

Reviews

[realmwriter]

Very cool man...! I can appreciate the dichotomy of the piece for sure...!

[Kenneth The Poet]

Thanks, brother.

[realmwriter]

Your welcome mayne...!

[Blue Moon Ice Cream]

Excellently written, as always. A bit lengthy for my liking, but bearable. The fifth stanza made me laugh. :D It seemed strange to me that you threw in "salt and pepper" as one of the contrasts, in between "yin and yang" and "doubt and faith." An ordinary and concrete object thrown in with two abstract ideas. It didn't quite gel with me. I loved the mention of yin and yang, though. That seemed like the perfect way to describe doubt and faith, and the way they rely on each other. Kind of like tug of war.

[Audrey Howitt]

I like how you juxtapose faith and doubt, how you find the commonalities and differences. Well done!

[Elijah Gleaves]

I'm totally geeking over this poem lol. I love the repetition it gave the poem a rhythmic feel, this is something can be performed on stage. It also made me think of something a person very dear to much once told me when my faith in my self was starting to falter. he said " If you don't stand for nothing you will fall for anything" I truly believe that is why human beings are so resilent there is something wired in us that makes us believe in something whether its God or the the belief that there is no god. Thanks for the food for thought today.

[Nobody.]

You kick a*s Geek! Well done!

[TJ]

Wow...what vision you have to have to take two such disparate ideas as faith and doubt yet find the common ground and comparison between them. One thing is fr certain; both live in all of us an always will. We all have undying faith in something just as we all have doubt in ourselves

[Hello, Goodbye]

fantastic stuff here... certainly I have felt these feeling and yearned to express them in such a apt way..

[joshua deathdealer]

I agree with Neva on this one. Excellent write.

[Neva Flores Smith - Cha..]

I would have to say I am one of those who has been kicked in every way possible and still I stand with a smile upon my face and a song in my heart. I truly believe that what we endure makes us who we are and allows us to be the columns that others lean on and learn from when they are kicked. Unfortunately being kicked is part of life and some of us are just kicked harder than others. Well penned Kenneth.