Dark Horses

Ideas are dark horses, running free in a field of increasingly less. Soon to be gone.

Dark Horses
By Keaton Foster

“Creatures as free as these ideas, bled unto the pages of all that I write.”

In this darkness, I sit. In front of this screen, again and again, I dare to commit. To these words, and by these words, I have become enslaved. I have no life—not one to adequately speak of. I have only this. There have been a few brief things, but they never seem to stick around. Nothing good stays close in my life or in my heart. I am certain that I am too broken to be fixed.

I am too saddled by my deepening neurosis to ever step into a world I’m certain is absolute madness. I fear others—their actions, their words, and the ways they see the real me while I myself refuse. With clasped hands, they point their judgmental fingers in my direction, adding to the hell to which I’m accustomed.

All I have is writing; it is both my salvation and my damnation. I wish beyond all that this were not so, but it is. Continually, I put these ideas to the page for the few who understand, for these ideas, and for all that I love about these words and the depths of my heart and soul they carry—a running testament to what I’m all about.

In a field, yonder, clear of all that seems abundantly real, are dark horses. They run wild, unchained by the boundaries of life. They, those dark horses, are representatives of death through escaping, yet-to-be-penned ideas. These words and ideas are disguised as burdened beasts carrying an impossible load—a load far greater than mine or yours. Unbearable their duties must seem, yet they continue on as needed, doing what must be done because they know nothing else.

To such a dilemma, I relate with ease.

Such a wild stampede, such expressionless relief. They do not speak, for they are nothing but wild creatures—quantifiable animals, once growing in number, no longer. Their existence is a culmination in the making. With each new day and every impossible night, more of them run away, escaping this mind, finding a new paradigm—a place, an idea, beyond the cold, far beyond my twisted role, in a field that stretches on and on, past imagination and removed from speculation.

These dark horses are make-believe creations made real to me. I know each one because I created them. I understand them, for in every way, I am them. They carry life—my ideas—away, and in turn, they bring death closer to my step. They have no concern for what they do, animals first and spectral shards of my imagination last.

Dark horses, bits and pieces of my deepest feelings and ideas, unable or unwilling to be expressed, set free, roaming as they see fit from one endless field to the next. In time, I have no doubt they will be gone, far beyond my realm, out of my skull, into the ether of things never to be told.

In time, they will no longer run in stampedes of many. Soon, there will be just a few to carry such an impossible load—one I’ve burdened them with, one I’ve saddled them with, one that, as much as I wish, can never be lifted from their spines or my own.

When the time comes, when only a few dark horses remain, I am certain that my livable life—the one hiding deep within me—will be done.

*Dark Horses*
*Written by Keaton Foster © 2015.*