Poetry and Prose included in The Sin of Greed.
I can only be myself, but I want to envelope your world. To become the comfortable silence that fills the void within you. Perhaps it is vanity on my part or just boredom. A challenge. Most people see that as a demeaning insult, but it is the purest relationship one could hope for. The challenge doesn’t end once the prize is won, it persists in the struggle to keep it.
The body is a temple to those that believe in the sacred. Nerves, muscle, bone, blood, and skin. It narrates the story of the life we led more accurately than any autobiography, but even then it is impersonal. Our inner world is what isolates us when in every other way we would be generic copies, random genetic hiccups not withstanding. Loneliness, self-imposed, but a jail we can’t escape, eventually becomes our sanctuary. A place that is safe and familiar, all we can do is build shrines dedicated to those we love.
Through my doorway is ink peeking through a pristine white undershirt so at odds with the skin underneath. Like a virgin’s wedding gown. Like the flesh. It conceals and encases what makes it perfect in its subtle native uniqueness. Beauty marks. The haze of incense drifts upward and around encasing the object of my obsession in smoke. A mirage, a vision, a jin come to visit me. A jin to inflame my senses and an angel to satisfy their demands. Moving closer, I inhale the thick aromatic smoke and, with it, the scent of dawn after a long night of cleansing rain. I inhale sharply and something from deep within comes to the surface, making my knees weak and breath a shallow exhale. This moment could last forever if I surrender my secrets. Who I am. And I do so as I walk over the piece of wood separating us, through the fog, and lightly glide my tongue over the tip of a star.
Duty binds us and, underneath that, love born of ignorance keeps our egos satiated. Simply doing what you’re told eases the mind into a comfortable haze. So thick are the clouds that any attempt at parting them causes pain. Only when we must earn the right to survive, when we experience conflict, do we grow. Blinking past the pain, we ask the world, “what is love?” As if the world can open our hearts and see what lays deep within. As if strangers could fully comprehend what taste the world leaves in our mouths as we close our eyes to it.
I am afraid. I am scared of the future. I can’t stand being alone because listening to my own thoughts terrifies me. I’ve never been treated with respect. These are the reasons why I stay, lover, family, friends. I enjoy attracting sympathy from others because I don’t know any other way of relating to people. I need you to keep me interesting. I love you because you love me. A coward? You hardly know me.
There will always be a part of me you will never reach. My own private world of thoughts and day dreams. The mere idea of it floods my senses, overwhelm me, and I yield to it. Relief. Knowing that I will be me; having deliverance from death. Comfortable silences without the need to acknowledge the Other are my fondest memories. I love you because you don’t need to see my world to know it exists and don’t pry unless I’m in distress. I love you because you let me by myself.
It is me. Play for me your song.
King. Master. Craftsman of lies.
I am the one that washed them away.
Maggots writhing beneath your skin.
Anger like smoke rising from truth’s purging fire.
How it engulfs your being as you gaze at me.
I can feel it seething from my perch.
Purgatory within the House of Slaves.
A child’s innocence severing the chains that bind us.
Satisfaction dwelling within his smile.
Your misery surpasses even the sky in its beauty.
What you miss, I could not guess.
Wondering if it was not just another lie.
Wondering why I even doubted otherwise as I tune
the instrument that you despised so much.
And I play your song for you.
There dwells no music in a corpse.
A song for the walking dead.
Worshipers of greed and vanity.
Hailing your castrated god.
Forked torn tongues lolling in your mouths.
March. March. March. March. And burn.
Play me your song.
My breathing mirror, glass with a pulse, water that can smile. My soul from a foreign land speaking with a voice that I have only heard in dreams. You can’t be seen by the naked eye, but you are always there. Like a phantom, living on the borders of my view and disappearing when my eyes seek you out. But I see you clearer than the ones standing around me and encircling me in a reality that is more illusion than truth. Your kindness like a soft caress on my cheek. Tenderness that lives only in the music of our thoughts. Within the screams of breaking glass that hides the grime underneath, that is our paradise. That is our home. It is where we meet face to face. The puzzle piece that can’t be replaced.
Eagle’s eyes tracing my lips
Innocent malice, the solitude of silence
Her fear forces my hand to move inward
Reaching for a heart that does not belong
within this breast
Tears of blood run down our faces
We feel not the emotion of it
Living through the motions like tress
must do
The breeze of another’s smile are feathers
gliding across our feet
Toes becoming talons, we are
We are cold inside
but our breath is fire
Our touch sears the flesh of the ones
who love us
The Eagle cries for no-one but herself
and she is no-one
an angel without a face
A demon that can disappear without a trace
Who are we?
Children of the stars, patrons of hearts
Jokers without masks forsaking their make-up
To dance
Dance to truth’s patient beat
The rhythm of zaar.
Thunder and rain
Lightning illuminating our silhouette in the weight of the night
It pounds our back and drapes our shoulders softly
As we toil in reverence to the act of labor
Spade striking soil we plant our seeds of doubt
Watching the others grow crooked and gnarled
We grin as we bow our heads in prayer
Our hands blotted with coffee stains
Scars from constant war with ourselves
The vigilant jin perched on our shoulders
Fostering love within tears of hatred they shed in our stead
We lift our dry eyes to gaze at the coming dawn
The sun petrifying the world around us
Such a slow agonizing pace, it makes us shudder
Anticipation or fear, an onlooker would not know it
Nothing cracks the surface of our placid faces
Etched in stone, dying with the sunrise
This is happiness
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