Look Up

The celestial ballroom opens its doors,

so cold beyond the dream;

The age of masquerade is seized,

possessed by wild phantoms unbound.

Alabaster hands become

rivers slow, unmasked eyes

blinded, groping

for a balcony in empty sky,

ribbon-tied feet not up, down but

head over heels.

At last, proud gems burst-

a rosy spiderweb filigree

hot as any hell;

Just another day, apparently,

of the empty rage- still cold-

yet unquenched.

Muse (III)

At last, her spirit leaves me,

The humming, whirring copper cogs,

That life of mine- cast

where it lights that world beyond,

where her eyes are finer

than any pearl in measured light

my single heart could give.

She leaves me my magic,

A stern delusion, keeping me,

To see just beyond

where the pale water, branching,

can still carry us both.

Muse (II)

There she lies, unconcerned,

More lofty than the moon

for all she can never see-

in the deep depths of stars,

in this singular mask of night.

So far away, there

My sanctuary here,

The face that paints

the crystalline bite, the wind

in every word I write!

Still, faster the wings fly,

Faster the steadfast soul

of a time long misplaced-

Cooler blows the cloak,

So heavy around my heart

where sculptures live forever!

For a moment, I see

my whole world lifted,

A shard of glass,

Into that stream, that

other world of light-

A sky of watery pearls

closer than the elven-faced stars.

Muse (I)

Crisp wings of time, pulled

thin on rice paper skeletons

left in collecting jars,

Still fly past.

They await me, each nerve

a stroke of misplaced flourish,

Each artery beneath hard temples

pounding, pouring lines

like streams of water,

forcing through me,

and I am transparent.

Rushing through my filthy hands,

Ripping past the ragged spots, damned,

They wield pearls of light, lanterns

in liquid trickle- to another world.

Shadow

A smiling, crouching shadow
Sings the sweetest lullaby-
Stooped, yet linked
In the night a thousand shades.

Only then, in the pool of light
Is it simple, just
As any love, found alone-
Mercy and truce.

The days are fooling,
The endless turning times
But the lightest cogs
In a turning, turning shift.

Luxuries

The bars, like gold wires
Drawn from smooth flame-
In these cold nights, they bow
A bending, wondrous welcome.

Pulling, pulling, the molten cage,
The unhammered rivers fall
Quite minutely, a magic told
The air around to cave, to
Spread some weakness and fly.

It's all just to fall, unhampered
As broken voices speak tongues-
A past forgotten, uncatching,
The empty molds a-waiting.

Apocalyptic Fractal

In staining succulence, overflowing
A rising mathematical sky,
Precision falls too easy- rushing
Sand ro rock, coals to diamonds.

The blood of the land found
A closed improbability,
Streaked deep in solemn earth,
Pulling in over out in rapid course.

The sea became a broken sky,
The globe curved beyond as
A bare heaven showed jagged streams
And its store of forever sunset.

Disillusionment Up

Dispossess the sky,
Disposses the loving, the yearning
Nothing the soul holds
So close, perhaps its only friend.

One by one, it slips,
Silvery strings fly free
So thick in the air, it clears
A quick, coughing wind.

We can only look on, soon.
The pain comes, not just before
And never leaves anymore.
We reach, but never grasp,
We grab, and fall further,
We fall, and may never rise.

Plead With Me

O, Romance, if you hear me sing,
Soft as a stream kissed raven's wing;
He gives his shadow to the shade,
Where days are broken, and persons made.

Where night is cruel, a beau of death,
Who serenades in hollow breath;
Never theirs, yet theirs to give:
Until dawn breaks, glass castles live.

So, make me gentle, sharp, and swift,
With glowing visage, yet a shame to lift.
Bury my joy, beneath thorns now mine,
I see one handsome, that naught refine.

The Setting of the Sun

Shadow runners
Carpet polished sky,
Late sunset
Muffled,
Not blooming
In all the draping trees.

Still foliage flickers
Still trees,
Still hedges,
All brace against
The fall of the day.

Night is the real surprise,
Sweeping black satin
Trail of a dancing dress;
Restless, but sure of foot.

What I Couldn't Say

The silent storyteller suffers more suspense than the waiting audience. The words cling to the mind instead of the tongue like icy water on an arctic expedition. Mutiny. Everyone wants to go home, of course. The skin misses the feeling of being human, being loved and respected because a ship can never stop floating on, drifting away even when there is no wind. It is not a human journey after some point in time. It is a number of heartbeats, not a number of beating hearts. It is a number with units of mass, not a number of the confined things that amass and gather nothing, but are still held in the fragile cages of the withering, confused soul. Still, the little stack of wood and exaggerated matches makes the journey beyond the maker of its journey. What is one cell, one body gone as long as the rest keep moving on? Some things will always, are bound to keep going.

Take the sum of at least seven wills to survive, and what is the outcome? An inequality, of course, an inverse equation pushed upon the sole, stable constant of simply being. It's still the physical world, after all. There must be something that is tangible in order for this to pull itself out of bed in the morning and sneak off while the mind is still asleep.

Presence is all that is needed for movement. Presence is movement, as the air is never still and the stream is never quite clear. We are all washing, of course. Trying to redeem ourselves so that our hands our clean but our minds are muddled. The feeling of being wet, even after the storm makes us feel alive. It's as if we're defiant of the water, the flood that's bound to wipe our dear hearts. Of course, the most painful of hearts drowns slowly and silently in its own pain.

This could very well be in a lonely little bathtub while the ship is a tumbling ice tray in a jumbled icebox. This could be the very essence of summer rebelling against the reality of the situation outside the unchanging tile walls. It's not as if one person takes one seat at one time, after all. Where does the winter go when the summer decides it's time to sweep in? It sits in its own little waiting room, or perhaps does a few rounds in the hall, bottling up all of the sickness and anger until someone just seems to call the right name. Then, the cold pinch of ice flickers and squeezes its miserly self into a random summer shower, as happens every year. Of course, the waiting is never cured.

Still, the impossible is so easily filed. It's only more complicated when imaginary clients of creativity start to make friends, as people do on these misleading voyages of leisure.

Beauty

As I predicted, my creative juices ran wild and sour, and took a while to come back to me. I guess it's nice, finding the occasional relief from sanity. Still, it cannot last too long. I cannot always be alone, lest I fall to other fears and other things that I so despise when my mind is in a reasonable state. Why, did I not write the best of poems and such when I surrounded myself with sane company?

Yet, I know that I'm rather crazy. I took four depression symptoms tests yesterday online. Two of them found me severely depressed, while the other two said I was either mildly depressed or nothing to worry about. I didn't take that test because I was worried, though. I took the test because I read a blog about how people often are diagnosed and prescribed wrongly, making their eccentricity and beauty all go away just because it wasn't exactly what the majority of society expected.

Perhaps that's why I like dead flowers. Not dead, as in completely dead, but dying. Especially if such flowers are fake. They show themselves to be dying, and yet they're always alive, in their deaths. They're perpetually dying, and therefore perpetually changing and morphing. It's a strange phenomenon, to be still and yet changing. It's almost an idea, a spiritual idea that doesn't die until the beauty, the need to see the motion dies. Could that be called a graceful death?

Of course, the silk flower that sits in my room actually points toward the sun and is perpetually glowing in its golden-pink fading, as if it were made of light instead of mere silk. It grows lighter and lighter as it ages, until the pink that connects it to the living will be but a shadow: only in the dark. Not that it's a very noticeable change.

You see, now, how my mind and my physical presence are so contradicting. It's difficult, but I'm happy that it's so. Especially after a weekend of being one person both inside and out.

It's ironic that the quizzes told me I was extremely unlikely to have a dual personality, even if the symptoms sound so extreme.

Time to find some real "objective" beauty in the world, if my classes haven't stomped it all out of me yet. :[