NaNoWriMo Project Poem: "Ballad of the Second Queen"
Or will I have to face
The dawn alone?
I’m holding on to thorns
Of what could be
While you clutch at velvet petals
Of a past fading to dust.
You’re singing in melodies
-With someone else.
While I perform verses
-Lost behind your choruses
So blinded by your pain
Your hurt
And your guilt
You won’t let anyone else in.
I keep offering a false paradise
Paradise I cannot give
There is a lonely song being sung
By someone I barely know
Yet every night
I listen for it here.
What is this hope since I heard it?
Will there be any when it’s gone?
Sing a song of fleeting romances
Hoping you’ll know you’re not alone.
Sometimes love is only for the moment
Blessed are those whose moments collide.
I’ll sing louder still
Hoping our moments catch each other on the fall
Or you’ll be here alone
Singing the lonely song I’ve wrought upon the world.
I’ll keep listening
For a paradise mine to take
A lonely song being sung
By someone I want to know.
Knowing that a moment
Is better than nothing at all.
Another Better Me
All of the work I do today is for her; the better me waiting at the end of this labor. A far off waif on the horizon that can be an ideal I see myself as to justify my procrastination, my lethargy. “What will be, will be,” Because it is so much more comfortable to think “destiny” has a route set for me. As if what I do or don’t do today doesn’t really affect that far off better version of me.
Sometimes, like in these moments of rumination, I am hyper aware my ideal cannot be without the work I can’t seem to put in. Other, clearer times I’m able to grasp that she will be me as I am now, because I have stagnated.
No longer bound by fear, but by inaction.
I’m going through the motions of a changing life, but not actually doing much to change it. I’m screaming loudly to avoid toiling in silence. And I am writing admissions because I need to get these words somewhere that I am accountable for them.
Even as I stand here and scream, “All I want cannot be!” there is that part of me that sees her; the other better me. The one waiting on the horizon to read carefully the harried words of the younger stranger she once was; trying to glean how she came to be where she is.
I need to do more and I need to do it now.
I need to do it alone.
Scream into the void until it starts to scream back.
Stay good and keep transmitting.
Tragedy of the Commons
Lens of Doubt
With anyone else I would bury the hurt and the guilt, but it’s you. It’s you and I don’t know what I did to cast a lens over every move I make. No matter how innocuous.
I am fully aware of how bared and open this is, and I know this too will pass as all things do. But at what cost? How many times can I pretend not to notice the little voice that questions all which was once accepted with glee? There is no cure for doubt when the other party refuses to take the antidote.
My penchant for staining the past rose-red is only hindering my forward momentum. Because of your lens, I see every grievance inflicted upon me; every broken promise. In fact, I’m not sure anymore that there were ever any kept promises now.
A lens of doubt influences both the ones that cast it, and those on whom it is cast. If you fear me, eventually, I’ll start to fear you through no fault of my own.
Lenses cast in lonely thought, without an outside voice to question their sanity, lenses cast by too many voices speaking too many doubts, cast by madness, cast by hatred, carve in all directions.
What force to drive love into hatred.
Faith, absolute faith, into doubt.
What is the cost? How do I turn doubt back into faith?
As I write these words I know I am saying too many of the things I keep inside; writing too many of the words I never say. But I will yell into the void as long as I am able, because one day, perhaps sooner rather than later, I will lose the chance.
Because I can’t scream at you, lest you doubt further still. But I cannot live to do only as you say. Life is far too long and far too short to waste making you proud; I see that you never have been and you never will be. It’s like chasing the horizon on this round planet, it never comes.
Now that they’re gone, I miss them, my rose colored lenses. But this lens of doubt, it might just save my life.
Stay good and keep transmitting
Divide
Siren
Can play the crowd
Make ‘em hang
On their every word
Out there in the glittering lights
Hide dreams you might never see
Pensive and broken
On the edge.
Always scared
They’ll see the lies inside.
You’re not the one
Just a siren,
Worried your silences
Will cause further investigation.
You make your noises
To drown out the voices
In your mind.
Hoping somewhere you can find
The silences you crave.
Bound by your dreams
How can what you love
Be splitting you at the seams?
Go on and play the crowd
Make ’em hang
On your every word
Don’t give them the chance
To find who you are
In your silences.
Pretense
Reactionaries
Weight of Guilt
A life that might not exist
But maybe if I dream it enough
I can come close…I can come close..
Is ambition alone enough?
How many countless words discarded
Before settling close enough?
Always a whim away
We tell ourselves
Like a memory gate to yesterday
Regaled by the lies around me.
The illusion that time passes around us
That we’ll be fine when the morning comes
A false heartache of the mind
Justified sickness we can ignore.
What is this weight
I can’t seem to shake?
Should it have been me
For the ignorance to take?
I’m drowning in days,
Days that never seem to pass.
Treading on in hope
For the moment I look back.
Maybe I can do this?
Seems like I can live this?
With just a memory on my mind.