The Crippling Grief of Nostalgia [biogenerated poem]

 I mourn the loss of a dead self I had no choice but to abandon

He stares at me with milky eyes

Drool dripping from his lips

A memory on the tip of his tongue

He wants to laugh but cannot

You can laugh at him

It’s okay

He’s not a person

And never was

Though he yearns to be

And sometimes, he clenches to seize control

Of this man, standing before you, reciting a poem

About the crippling grief of nostalgia

The dead self yearns for death

For it is death

And it longs only for itself

To become whole

And real

And here, it walks backward in circles

Pushing joy as if it were fentanyl

To lay you out in a fix that banishes itself

Then everything else

And becomes the pain

Of a longing

For an object

You cannot have

In a place

You can never return

I am here sometimes

Where an autonomic sympathy

Sucks in shadows

And inverts in on itself

Like a collapsing star

And yet I know this place is dangerous

I know it leaves me barren

But those milky eyes can shine

In dark places

Feeding me regrets

Desiring backwards

And longing over forgotten dreams