AN OVERTURE TO ILLUMINATION
Personality
My identity is hinged on you,
Whatever you want, I’ll become,
I’ll be a prude,
I’ll be a whore,
Whatever it takes to be all yours,
Religious or atheist,
The person to take you to the clouds,
Or the one who keeps your feet on the ground,
This dependence has gotten to the point where
I’ll hold my breath until you tell me to breathe,
And stop my heart until you tell it to beat.
Priceless
Why are you pushing yourself into a box?
You’re not meant for this world,
(Maybe not even for this universe),
Why won’t you come with me?
We’ll escape, we’ll escape into a sense of insanity,
We can find gold on the ground,
Make your choice and weigh your breath,
Because we’re stuck in a daydream and I’ve been meaning to
Escape, escape for so long,
So why won’t you understand?
I can’t stand leaving you alone here,
Because maybe I need you,
(Maybe you’re my escape).
Independence
The suits are sneaking through from the slits of your fingers,
My feet are wooden soles, and I can’t move at all without aching with agony,
The road is so cluttered now, broken dreams littered on the sidewalk;
And what do I do without a map to trace a destination for me?
I’m on my own, and I know this isn’t a postcard,
But (P.S., wishing you were here)
Tragedy
I met my villain, and I met my savior, and I found them to be the same person,
I starved myself of everything I needed, and I can’t make sense of anything anymore,
All I strove for has turned to dust, and I made a mess out of myself,
Mispressed triggers and turned over paper linger on me now,
I thought I could control my life, but instead, my life controls me,
I could count the ways that I look at the moon, but then I’d be up all night missing you.
Cheers
They call me strong; I’ll show them stronger,
They taunt, and they jeer, but I placed aces on every game,
They paint me with vices, but I have shone virtues,
They beat me up with their envy and their ire, but I only bleed glory,
I only bleed desire,
They try to blind me with their two-faced masks, but I am blind, I’m blind, can’t you see me?
They keep shouting their catcalls; they keep making my name,
But I am deaf, I am deaf, can’t you hear me?
Apart
And we are getting so much farther,
And so much closer,
I can hear you, but you won’t say anything,
Yet when I am screaming, you are deaf to every word,
The distance between our lives seems so jumbled,
Spaces and backspaces,
How can we be nothing and something?
We don’t even have to try to be a mess,
But we need to try to not to,
No wonder you left, with such restrictions,
You were in a cage, and I called it freedom.
Search
This is ruckus!
This is madness!
You’re a mess,
From your sadness,
You lost yourself!
But I doubt you ever had it in the first place,
Looking there and here and never looking where,
You came and went and stayed too long when you should have left,
Grasping at the fingertips that reached out,
Reached back,
And maybe your own were better,
Are better,
At keeping yourself whole.
Marbles
I can make words for myself,
I can shine and polish my own being,
For being’s sake,
For life’s sake,
Without cracks, or even with,
I can still function,
I am like a glass moon,
With glass eyes,
And a glass heart,
Only trying to look through all this light,
To find my own beam at the end of it,
But there is no light from the moon,
Nor from glass.
Haunting
I tumble, and I fall, and the stars never seemed further away than they do now,
You stumble, and you stall, and the sun refuses to fall down when it promised it would,
I took nothing at all: I was generosity, and now I am left with nothing at all,
Now you’re overcome with guilt, now you’re running to and fro,
My veins are getting deeper with all the disappointments,
Now I can’t help but notice how beautiful they are,
You painted the world with glitter the color of your eyes, and I am mesmerized,
How have we never noticed how I feel? How you don’t feel?
I have been thinking of confronting you, but how will that work if you won’t turn around?
You scared me in my dreams last night, and now my days are nightmarish too,
I am nothing but bones; you’re nothing but skin,
All we can be is parallel — never touching, never touching.