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An Oxymoron Defeating Your Own Purpose
An Oxymoron Defeating Your Own Purpose (Completed: August 9, 2005)
Just a reflection,
a shadow even,
of doubt, of care, of fear-
all wrapped in human flesh
wrapped in you-
how strange your love is,
dancing in the moonlight,
within sight but never within reach.
And I wonder if it dances to remember,
or rather to forget.
As it spins
I realize it is neither.
Your dance is your own.
You live neither in the past,
nor do you take heed to the future.
You have no plan,
no way of knowing if another breath shall come
or if you even want it to.
Because all you know is now,
and now is all you have.
I’ve packed you away-
your photographs, your scent, your touch,
our memories.
To you, none of it exists.
For it is a past you no longer live for,
but one you’ll die trying to forget.
Am I the final fall
that lead to the ending of an era,
or am I the first step
of a second beginning?
Perhaps I’ve only started what I’ve finished,
and imprinted another circle in your heart.
A first impression,
a second chance,
a third revelation-
close encounters with figures and faults.
Since possibilities are endless
and imagery is reality,
what kind of literal statement do you make?
You’re blunt and to the point,
an oxymoron defeating your own purpose.
If today is a mirror
and tomorrow is a reflection of yesterday,
am I a past reflection of your future?
And in that case, what have you accomplished?
The repetition of yesterday’s mistakes
makes for another fall and a third beginning.
Altering your behavior adjusts your mirror,
and tomorrow
can be a reflection from another angle.
Eyes of a fallen angel
and the mouth of a rising demon
are the soul ingredients of a monster in the making.
How treacherous your waking
and hollow your heart.
Follow your heart.
Into depths as shallow as your ideals,
and drink of the stale water.
An illness, a disease, an infatuation
that bleeds the eyes of their sight
and mocks the mad in their misery.
In their mystery.
You have an American sense of direction,
falling faster than you think you’re rising;
you’ll never establish equilibrium,
let alone surpass it.
You’re just a suburban boy
with dirt on your shoes
and salt on your shoulders.
Colder,
isn’t it?
This form of self-destruction?
Mutilate your thoughts,
to resemble some sort of normalcy,
and I promise your flesh with follow suit.
Black and white silk
caressing the gray areas of your mangled skin,
and a top hat to hide your hot head.
Instead ,
perhaps you should try a conscience on for size.
With a cricket in your right pocket
and Raid in your left hand,
you could learn the meaning of trust
and self-control
in one sitting.
The past prevents progress.
When will I stop hurting because I love you
and start hurting because I loved you?
Romantic ramblings and unsung truths
don’t make me crazy-
they make you harder to forget.
You,
whose feelings shift with the seasons,
are a zombie, a cannibal,
devouring and purging the remnants
of a love gone wrong.
You think you’re a mystery
but you’re just a master of blatant disguise.
Just another mindless fool
lost to the madness of a world full of the rotting carcasses
of people just like you.
Material withers away
and once it has,
all that will remain are the words you wish
you still had the lung capacity to breathe.
My words,
words that matter,
words that are more than the immoral morals you
base your life on.
You’re already sentenced to life in hell;
why not throw on eternity?
Entity.
Our bodies are temples
and yours is burning beyond your flesh.
How can you call this way of living
any kind of life at all?
I should have known romancing the enemy is no different
that courting heartache.
And as I look to the skies
I know such premeditated plans
can only be the works of fallen angels.
This alternate ending wasn’t written in the stars
and I can’t wait to be saved
by some miracle that fizzled in the atmosphere.
Adhere- to the world that is so quickly fading around you.
Join me for a drink
and indulge your ego at the expense of your soul.
Even if you had a worry,
it still wouldn’t add any minutes to your life.
Time is but an illusion, a mirage,
simply nonsense spoken backwards.
How could you put that kind of number on eternity-
especially when you’re too busy living in the moment?
But just as everything else under the sun,
moments pass;
and all you have to show for your efforts
is an exhausted life with no real meaning.
You should spend more time
subjectively viewing the greatest creation,
the only masterpiece,
one that took seven days to bring to completion.
Maybe then you could save a few nonexistent minutes to appreciate
that breath you just released.
Sweet release,
from that world you call your own.
I don’t need your love-me-knots and forget-me-always,
for I’ve made up the mind we sleep in.
I don’t have to kill you,
but I can’t keep saving you.
This stretch of mortal time
couldn’t outlast the determination in my eyes-
only forever lasts but a few hours
when young hearts are involved.
Even if you wrapped me in clover
you still couldn’t convince me that what I feel is living;
lovers aren’t supposed to face reality,
and I only need a few minutes to destroy
what took years to rebuild.
Gilded and gritty,
as though you were royalty,
yet you’ll never know what it’s like to be sent flowers.
You could never know what your fear has done to you,
nor what your faithlessness has done to me.
If infidelity tastes this foul,
knowing myself so well isn’t that crazy;
but pinning you so accurately must be insanity.
I just can’t find it in me
to feel sorry for someone
who will never love me.
Swallowing my hatred will never be as difficult
as watching the smog condescend
over those eyes that have loved everyone but me.
Do you see?
How those prayers that go unanswered
are the best gifts you could ever receive?
You can put up your barriers
and guard that heart
as though there were something worth protecting,
but I know that brittle bonds and thin ice
will never gain you the trust you misconstrue.
But what is truth?
If your sight is unreliable,
what do you base your life on?
Of course,
loving eyes can never see-
so I suppose I’ve missed where your excuse
of leading life oblivious to your own treacherousness
was valid.
Shadows and ashes-
they’re one in the same when describing
the way you see
yourself.
Resting on a shelf,
a pedestal perhaps,
is the way you envisioned your love.
How shameless your immodesty
and distasteful your insolence.
The irony in your life
is that you lack possession of it,
leaving you with nothing
to be modest, or the least bit immodest,
about.
Just where do I get the clout,
to accuse you of everything short
of believing you are a god
who lacks the faith to believe in one?
I suppose I get it from the way you cringe
every time you look in a mirror,
yet spend every spare moment
ogling your reflection.
Perfection,
can only exist in the purest of flaws.
The only profound and increasingly divine fault
I can find in you
is me.
Whether I am the silent conscience,
the incompletion that completes you,
the answer that kept you searching,
or the one that got away who never really left,
you could make one simplicity
a little less complicated and call me
an oxymoron defeating my own purpose.
