Adrift on Whispers

Even sweet words can be sharp,

Leaping from the many lips we can no longer differentiate,

Flaying the flesh and seeping into what lies beneath,

But not to worry, that skin never felt like home,

So, we peel it back in search of some charnel relic,

The ossified remains of promises made to ourselves,

The corpses of the Next times and Never agains,

Silenced forever by that alluring voice:

Those voices, now one and like heroin,

That carried the soul away euphoric,

Leading us to that familiar precipice,

Our heels rocking on its edge, 

The rocks beneath us howling in hunger,

As a whisper, like a breath, sends us reeling,

Plummeting toward the usual result,

Because the rocks were always the solution,

And we were the variable that failed to change.

Were I to allow myself again to love, 

What then might my heart suffer? 

Wed to numbness by cruel devices, 

It's dagger whispering at my throat, 

Glinting in the cold starlight of my mind, 

Promising to sever me from pain. 

My kiss won’t leave a scar 

Nor will my touch abandon 

Breathed that Spector into my flesh, 

Its venom coating my consciousness, 

A cloying, fetid honey that feigned disabuse, 

Whilst handing me is masque. 

And I, withering behind that porcelain, 

Sequestered from the virtue of hurt, 

Knew only those savorless feelings, 

Unseasoned, uncalloused, and unnurtured,  

That kept my parched lip from asking, 

“Whence cometh love?”  

The sky fractured in its agony, 

Having dawned the mantle of its gloomy disposition, 

Pelting the earth, whom it loved, with shards of its longing. 

Reaching out across the constancy that was their separation, 

Its arms like Violet streaks that kindled the air with desire 

Recoiling thereafter, having embraced only their own detonation, 

Seeking in vain the solace of union. 

And yet the earth was still, 

Unmoved by the pleas of that voice like thunder, 

That bade it reach for the heavens in return, 

For stillness was its nature, 

And so, it welcomed the rain. 

 I know this prison well, 

I built it myself, 

The walls not of rock and iron, 

But coiling tongues of flame, 

Whose lashings cause the flesh to recoil, 

To curl and fleck away like ash, 

My body drawn down into abyssal lungs, 

Expelled through an upturned nose, 

To convalesce before a hateful visage, 

Not unlike my own, 

Whose gaze, in rebuke, seems to say: 

Well done… and welcome home, 

You Fucking Monster. 

I know what it’s like for a heart to die, 

Encased in unfeeling stone, absent promise, 

The cold kiss of the void like lead upon your cheek, 

Drawing down sorrowful eyes to gaze no more in wonder, 

Tomb-bound for fear of want, 

For want can wound, and wounds still reach us, 

Even behind formidable slabs where the ghost of love slumbers, 

Where no warmth treads, and passion is but a myth, 

Begging for fugue and succumbing still to remembrance. 

I pray thee, dwell not in the waters of Lethe!  

For I know, too, the glory of a heart reborn, 

The pall ripped away by the caress of hope, 

Whose meteoric footfalls fracture the bedrock, 

Making way for the Mnemosyne, 

Whose flow, like Pheonix flame, resurrects the pulse, 

Entreating us again to love, 

Unbounded in the face of fear, 

As though pain had never earned its name, 

And our scars spoke only of virtue.