"When I am writing, I am trying to find out who I am…" –Maya Angelou
All I feel now is the lie
My heart is filled with falsity
Telling me I’m angry
Never telling why
Somewhere is the truth
Anger is convenient
Despair the main ingredient
Mixed with sadness and youth
But truth carries the pain
And knowing doesn’t save me
When I know I’m going crazy
Because how could this be sane
But if this is my deceit
Then I could use a little crazy
Because the only thing to save me
Is to not admit defeat.
July fourth
Watching fireworks
Each one, a family
Each one, a memory
Every one a possibility
Only, not for me
The people behind those lights
I will never meet
The moments that they make
Will never require me to be complete
And I’ve been told so many times
Not to make so much of little things
But it strikes me in its tragedy
And the tears take off with failing wings.
There was a moment I was visiting,
But only visiting was I;
‘Cause I only dare at quiziting
And the only true word is goodbye.
***
Don’t read too much into it,
It never does to try;
For who really understands it
Except for never I?
I see shadows of him everywhere,
And though they tell me that he’s just not there,
How can it be anyone but Arrogance
Who tells me I’m worth being here?
I see you tugging at the threads
And I laugh at my own pain;
Oh, my little fool…
You’ll understand when you’re insane.
I swear I’m trying not to cry,
But it comes every time I think of you;
I keep asking myself why:
It turns out I’m a traitor, but a loyal one too.
I wonder if you think of me,
Or if you’ve traded your stray for a much better breed;
One that stays where you can see
And isn’t prone to making of a friendship lost, a need.
I don’t know if you feel like I do;
If you’re just waiting for an overture to come.
But I’ve given what little I know how to,
And still it seems our friendship’s done.
I believe in happy endings;
But I think this story might not end that way.
Sometimes there’s an inevitable end to things
That’s neither good nor bad, but just a sad cessation of yesterday.
***
Sorry again for my scarcity; I fear that may very well continue. I’m eager not to slip as deep into my wallowing as before, but when I try sitting down to write with positivity in mind, I immediately go blank. The closest I can often get to positivity, it seems, is a lack of negativity. Which frequently translates to silence.
In this case, I still may not have made it into the Sunshine & Rainbows department, but honest sadness is different from giving in to frustration, and this was very much on my mind.
Sorry yet again for posts unread, and comments neglected; my mind has been elsewhere. Don’t let that make you think I do not notice, or do not care; I notice your kindness, and care for your thoughts. My own thoughts, however, are not always suited to the challenge of being revealed, and thus I leave things for another day…
I wrote a dozen poems
Off the top of my head;
Wrote them, wondering
If I was better off dead.
Because I fight with my brother;
I fight with my mom.
Sometimes I fight with my sister
When she goes on and on.
So I wrote a dozen poems
Just to clear out my mind:
They were pretty good,
And of the earnesty kind.
I would have shared them with you,
But I was out walking,
And by the time I came in,
Every one I’d forgotten!
We’re on our own, don’t you know?
We looked, but He was gone
The sky is ours, and there’s nothing there
How’s it feel to know that you were wrong?
You’re in self-made exile
While we’re the patriots
We know that dawn doesn’t come;
The shadows of our towers is all there is.
And yet still, you go on singing
Like there’s more than sadness in your throat;
Still, you speak of warmth
Like cold’s not our only comfort.
We’re on our own, don’t you know?
We sing a different song.
The sky is ours, but we’ve no wings;
We’ve been falling all along.
Inspired by the song “Three Birds in Babylon,” by The Gray Havens:
He sat down beside her, and he told her this tale:
There was once an old man who lived a comfortable life with his family; But he was sad, and often cried. When he thought he was alone, sometimes his family would overhear him say he was cursed.
The family was very worried, and tried very hard to cheer him up. They would say and do all kinds of ridiculous things to try and elicit a smile from him. But still the old man was sad.
Then one day, the old man died. At the funeral, a stranger approached the casket, and began to laugh. The family was angry, and demanded to know why he was laughing. “Because,” he said, “if you had only asked him why he had been crying, then he would have been freed from my curse.”
“So, tell me,” he said quietly. “Why do you cry?”
You know that you have angry spirits
When there are holes in your walls:
These spirits haunt you even absent —
Though, they may not be so bad.
Once you get to know them,
You find they’re really only sad,
Trying to grasp upon this life
When they can only seem to drift;
But such a haunting, we so often find,
Only widens yonder rift;
And the deepest, darkest pits
Are made of our own fear to fall.
