How seldom I assume sweet life must taste.
When the fool dances in empyreal rhymes
did we see ourselves become carriers of lies.
For even poets hide in well-written disguise,
but they can’t keep the pain from coming back to life.
My own mirror reminds me well enough.
Tugging on my sleeves pretending that I’m cold.
Aware of the weather changes and finding excuses not to go.
But pain was like a heartbeat on its own: constant, ticking, pulsating,
but never wavering.
Its presence alone like a weighted blanket
as it waits for me.
The void hollows and seduces.
It lingers and it stares and echoes through the heavy nights.
Like moths in the bleeding halo of flames we ache to get closer,
but we know.
Oh, we know.
So, shall I envy?
Shall I envy those that have lived?
Dare laugh at my virtues for they are only words, but my vices are what shall define me.
Let me ail and let my anguish pump my heart, for what else is it beating for?
Let Hamlet kill through curtains far all that matters
as we ourselves become playwrights of tragedy
plunging into forests of bygone laughter
undisrupted by our nature.
So yes, I envy!
But I also pity those that have lived shamefully
pretending to love in order to forget.
Longing to be loved by someone who didn’t,
but still I hoped.
And half the sorrow was born anew when I caught a glimpse of him.
A gaze is a gaze unless returned.
Then it’s a look.
And didn’t we all wish to be looked at again?
But what does a child know? Of love? Of life?
For even heaven may not know what I meant to say.
When all else fails and the angels rain from the skies:
‘Come and save my soul!
You’ve given me daggers to hold and tissues to squeeze,
but never reasons not to perish and no promises left to keep’.
Flowers have blossomed for less, but the marble hums in rosy puffs of air
as the smoke turns to dust and we see death was once fair.
So, let grief become the clock that measures time,
because pointers bleed when sun hides moon
and the moon loved me while I was still in dream.
How seldom I presumed sweet life should taste.
Like colorful birds in cages of time did we only wish to come alive.
Speak! Sing me of brothers and men that lived!
Let silence become the watcher, the stranger of life.
But the ire lingers on heavens breath longer that the nectar of sweet kisses
stupor on aged liqueur and foolish praises of dead men
as I ache to wither,
but you never look in marbled rivers
and the moon howls for dear Ophelia
as she, as well, became the cold in which we shiver.
I have become a beach of white painted cobblestone,
a shore of washed-up words and
blushing opaque doors.
I’ve cut through paper the way I cut through skin,
but my arms carry lines heavier than paper does
and so, I read anew each line and each poem like a sin
as if I was only ever made to read the same things all my life.
And the pain does not fade-
it solidifies and hardens-,
reminders of battles never won,
but the flesh stays pink,
for the deed is done,
and the words are stumped in ink.
And you see me a poet for writing in rhymes,
and I’ll become a poet of old
writing about what has always been romanticized.
Lines finally beautiful in the eyes of those that deemed them unspeakable-
texts almost contended- now readable.
And you’ll might accept those
but not the ones on my back and face
for when I was trying to rid myself
of all I deemed disgusting
for who could love my natural state?
When all I could was bleed ‘til my fingers
could have well been blades?
Empty words laid out on empty hearts
crying until the sun wakes up and the moon becomes a world apart.
But I’ve longed to rage
when my hands start resembling those of old Cain,
and my skin aches and trembles
but the blush remains.
Haven’t I stringed enough the fingers of thy glory harp?
Haven’t I built tales from broken shards?
For we are wasteland of splitting hearts
and they wander us
searching for treasures long buried together with our missing parts.
Hasn’t pain been worthy of being loved too?
When souls dance in rhythmical cries
and the lies themselves become dogmatized?
I see the ghosts of kings sat to pray
In melodies of buoyant poets
wandering the places, I long to slip away.
Temples lost now schools of stoics,
above the sky, the shape of sweet death
so, let me close my eyes and savor my last breath.
My hands start dreaming for themselves,
the skin that beats,
cutters buried under shelves.
They all whisper day and night,
like monsters under beds, afraid to come to light.
And I hoped not to feel
The urge, the lust, the appeal.
I resisted for so long I forgot for whom it was for,
my heart still speaks for some semblance of control
deprived of the air that fills my lungs
when all I hear are hostile tongues.
They claw themselves to the back of my throat
whispering lies through my mouth
covering the bottom as I try to stay afloat.
I’ve drugged my mind so you could lay yourself to sleep
while I’ve yet to count a thousand sheep.
But my scars shouldn’t be proof of my pain,
No piece of evidence for battles fought
No sign that I’ve been permanently maimed.
You know of no lessons that I’ve been taught
Of all the struggles I have faced,
Of all the times I’ve longed to meet the gods above.
But how seldom I suppose sweet life could taste.
Like colorful birds in oblivious times
did we see what it meant to be alive.
Remember we were children once
dreaming of the ocean’s tide.
Old years laid down in heavenly meadows
as I grief the days that only remain in prose.
I drink them in like the love of my kin,
and as the sun softens the poems on my skin,
I let them heal in the remnants of night,
and the grey clouds can follow me again
but not tonight.