Showing posts with label confusion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label confusion. Show all posts

Tuesday, 9 June 2015

Questions

No, I don't understand it any more than you:
why I turn from the things I want the most,
why I always long to find the source of the smoke,
why beauty inevitably makes me think of ugliness,
why the trusting seem like fools to me but liars even more so,
why I refuse to let certain pains fade away,
why my guilt is not an elephant in the room so much as it is a snake coiled in my lungs,
why I avoid thinking about my own happiness as much as possible,
why I hold so many names in my heart like glistening gemstones,
why I was so willing to fall in love until I began to,
why I have an anger that will not be quieted and cannot be stilled,
why I did not think of death when I was dying.

Sunday, 17 May 2015

Bright Colors

If I've fallen now, at least I can say that my eyes can only
look upwards. But that isn't right. I constantly look down,
and I can perceive unplumbed depths that call to me in voices
sweetened by my own lack of hesitation. I am numb. No -- less
than that -- deadened to sensation to such an extent that I long
for the things that used to cut and bruise and turn my insides
black with their onslaught. I am perhaps a masochist. Or is it
that I simply long for bright bursts of color, and I do not
care if they are the reds of blood and the purples of
congealing sorrows? For happy things: the yellows, the pinks,
and the greens seem so distant, altogether garish
and brazen, that I fear they would disrupt the collage
I've built within myself.

Monday, 26 January 2015

Tree

A single tree's pale fingers
stretch towards the light
I am with them
Leaves pierce and flourish
I grow for a time
But when buds begin to pinprick
my arms turn inward
The flowers spring forth and bear fruit
I shrivel and my eyes flash
My mouth begins to speak
and blackness pours out
My inner tree lies dormant
until the cycle begins again

Saturday, 17 January 2015

Yearning

I will call for you, but you will not hear me.
You will see my smile, but you will believe it to be a frown.
I have reached for you at night, but shadows have this
nagging way of warping things, don't you think?
And our shadows have grown so long over the years that they
are almost all that there is to what we see of each other
most days -- half-formed apologies
and already-forgotten pleas.
Have you ever wished that things were different?
Prayed to every god you could think of?
I've wished that I were a different person, one that you
could look at and believe to be beautiful.
Because I'd rather you be blinded by beauty
than be turned away by my ugliness.
But this is not a dream, and my life is
not another one of my fantasies.
Reality is crushing.
The things we hope for may never come to pass.
Are you content with our current standing?
Will you stand there, passive, as the years turn our desires
to dust and our wants become the air that we breathe,
until all that we are is simply
old yearnings, slowly dying needs?

Thursday, 8 January 2015

Burn It Down

The days blend into one another, dissolving like paper on the concrete after so much rain.
The burning echos of your words fade, and the dull bruises in all those dark places barely ache anymore. Who were we back then, that we fought so viciously? We sought purchase on one another's weaknesses like desperate people going to war, trying to gain ground when there was nothing of value to win. Did you see how cramped I felt, inside of my own skin? I was clawing, scratching my way out -- you were only in my way. It wasn't you I wanted to hurt; it was myself and my own foolishness that I was trying to destroy. I wanted to smash the mirror that reflected the sorry soul that avoided my eyes, day after day, but you stood in the way of my fist! You loved the crumpled being that I was, and I perversely, unconsciously, needed to prove to you that I was as despicable and undesirable as I knew myself to be. So I lit a match and I threw it upon us, deliberately destroyed something I knew could save me because I needed to burn a part of myself to the ground before I could begin again.

Tuesday, 23 December 2014

The Last Light

My body wakes
to loud voices
The world is dark
and my heart aches
in ways I no longer
understand
My lungs are bruised
I swallow smoke
and not air
Blind, I run
confused
I seek my one bright light
my last light
in my darkness