Blots

|A Thousand Words|

I pace around a sliver narrow
Of black, formless, peace-wrought shadow
Under a plastic sheet,
A shadow where I can contemplate
The reason I'm shrouded in hate
That sings so strong and paints my fate
In morbid melody.

The Sun scalds fringes of my hair,
A frothing, rage-white sentinel
Defining my little bubble of bliss;
A single sound brings rage within,
So I wheeze a sigh and close my lids,
And drown in nature's sullen kiss.

Detachment. Solitude. A wordless glaze,
That tries to cut and gnaw away
With gusto, every creative ray
Across the page; threatening to slay
Every wee throb of inspiration
That guides my trembling appendage.

I'm alone, and not averse to it.
People have always, scarily so,
Been to my growing indignation-
Little more or less little,
Than lumbering blobs of love brittle,
Nuggets of good in a broth of evil,
Puppets of continued validation,
Primal urges
And expectation.
All but the last I can embrace,
Cradle them, high and low;
But expectation jars me so!
I turn their face against my back,
And forgo their constant companies
For sombre ink stains akin to these.

The wind serenades in succinct kisses,
Blown to life by pining pieces
Of leaf and twig and azure sky;
A duo so bizarre and crudely blatant,
Intrepid, downscaled forms of Satan,
Blowing my wounds and wrinkles by.

The whole of my dreams and drawbacks,
My words of wisdom and idioms of idiocy,
Are reduced to vision-betraying adornments
Before the wings of yesterday,
Running a little bleaker,
A little weaker every day,
Belittling the seeker
Of firmament,
Over and over, on dewspun flowers with dangling petals;
And I, thrown behind their flowing filaments,
Thirsting for a space to settle.

And as I'm carried through this journey
An angel donnes form ahead of me.

Not hence nor thence, and o'er the fence as a long-lost friend, it's sprung,
A dense lens of flowery pretence about its eyes is slung,
A little Sun and shadow lie
forsaken at its feet,
In a tragic, sorry demeanour, a neglected defeat;
And hands the creature knows not,
Only outlets that give in occasionally
To blue, dried-up slush,
That oozes as it pleases upon unkissed paper creases,
And weaves them into edible rhymes
No eye deserves to judge.

And upon the sight of such a being,
My heart grows strong and my wits grow keen
And I gather before it my shattered anxiety,
Blotted in hours of desperate writing,

For never have I been alone
When I'm the driver of my poem,
And as I pen, my bruises pulse,
Downpours of fire in freezing winters;
While people weep, so weep their eyes-
I weep through thumb and four forefingers.

And as I pen, my pulses bruise,
Slicing the skin against to half,
And breaking flesh, and gulping air;
For noses only respire in bliss,
And thus I slice my seething wrist
To cut another nostril pair
That breathes in air amid despair.

I gather my broken anxiety
And in that vast, boundless lea-
Fall onto my knee.

I worship the demon with my blood
I grovel, I grieve, I lament,
I cry countless days of disease
That ebbed as ailments silent.

The demon was my God. I'd found
A final conformation,
A call declaring I wasn't alone
In my dilapidation.

My ambiguity-drowned years were
Futile but not islolated,
I wasn't the only one that stayed
Lone and invalidated.

I'd found my pen, my pain, my prayers
In this giant, unsung beast
My temple of insecurity
Now flaunted its own priest.

The oozing blue was ink that I
So daily gave the world,
That all ended up in the trash
In reckless bundles furled.

The sun and shadow now posed as
Miniatures of my days
Constantly teetering between
The truth and the masquerade.

A bunch of other qualities
All coincided in him,
He even had a dull, brown patch
Just where I slit my skin.

From aching head to throbbing toe
The beast was I in all,
And therefore I, in that still lea
Upon my knee did fall.

And just when my fingers touched his
Roughened, beaten old skin,
A question rose its head in me
Like scruples in a whim.

I asked my heart- "If this was me,
If I was the standing beast,
Then who was doing the praying, who
Was crying at his feet?"

And who was grovelling so sad
Who was singing his praises?
Who was seeking attention in him
Through piteous, forlorn gazes?

Who had endured the light and dark
Who had brought them so far?
Who had grinned with his grinning wounds
Who had smiled through his scars?

Who was the writer that had used
The oozing ink for good?
Who was this person, if I was
The unsung beast that stood?

It flashed upon my eye, I shook
In dawning understanding
As I realised a simple fact
After hours of dismantling.

Dismantling my esteem, my love
Dissecting my dignity
In hopes of someone up above
That shared my fraternity.

This beast unmoving I had found
In the course of losing all,
And therefore, in that burning lea
Did I on my knee fall.

It was a trophy of hard work
Indeed, but at what price?
A prize earned from killing my worth?
Pushing dreams to demise?

I was unique, I was beautiful
So poignantly sad,
I had no reason ever to seek
Validation, as I had.

I turned away from that old beast
Back to my sun and shadow,
Bearing a heart less feared of woe
A mind less friends with sorrow.

The world spins round in pirouettes
While I anchor my stead,
The happy and unhappy pale
In the face of my fitful tread.

The beast was a wish come true, for it
Was all I dreamt to be;
Like every dream, it couldn't but
Kiss non-being eventually.

The beast was a mere distorted film
Of my unmet desire-
Bearing this thought shall I move on
And thus shall I retire.

A simple thought indeed, but Oh!
It brought to course my worlds,
Even though it took a life to learn
And to pen, a thousand words.