These Are My Stripes
You're waiting for the real effects...
Like a trial prescription you try it out,
But sometimes the drug just doesn't take,
Won't commit,
Won't relieve,
Is hard to quit.
Half the time you worry and fret,
Suicide dreams of utter neglect.
And it spins and it spins,
Until the fondness that was
Stops,
Drops,
And bottoms out.
Then you're just filled with salty talk
For salty wounds that make it
Hard to walk. Dream on then,
See the "could have been"
Of it all, until a knife of rememberance
Stabs you in the wrist,
Leaving you limp,
Spilled on the tiles
Where you finally slip,
As the melancholy rises.
Guilt is inevitable.
No one can escape the sorrows
Of their soul's sufferings.
Offering a plate of repentance
Is not fulfilling enough for
Resplendance, radiance
Bound to faith unfounded,
Body and soul binding
To anything that eases,
Releasing,
Temporary,
Perfunctory.
There's a singer on a stage,
Breast akin to the expanse
Of universal boundry, sifting
General public opinion into the
Mire of her heart, all the while
Pursued by the grave, and
Death itself lay behind the curtain,
She is certain,
It is written,
All things expire,
The voice, the fire.
This is all just self-denial.
To commit, to leap
Into the heap of wanton feeling
Leaves me reeling
For the door to run away,
If I stay it only prolongs the ending,
Shall we be pretending
It to be any other way?
Maybe that's false.
There the ultimate feeling,
But it comes at a cost,
Or so I believe,
And often perceive.
I delegate emotions
Without much reprieve.
Foolish in numbers,
Subject to games
That I often detest,
Still I submit all the same.
Leaden, hardened bodies fall
Suddenly limp to the forfeit
Of time's collapsing product.
Harvesting the life we are given
Seems an awfully tough concept.
Driving and striving for
Something worth having
When the having is losing
All that was won before.
If I turn the face long enough
Perfection must arise,
But then you have the price again,
Seldom right, always grave,
Slaves to the end
For the comfort at stake;
It would do us one better
Never to be comfortable
In the first place.
We are all of us gamblers.
You come to me wagering,
And the odds are against you,
I am a rough hand,
I am a big game,
A big gamble,
Just remember whats at stake.
I'm not going to tread on water,
Not forever,
Somewhere soon I'll cut it out,
My bouts of resilience
Can only last so long, I'm sure.
Take me as I am,
A blade of grass is received
In no other way than this.
Though I'm maybe something more,
Maybe I'm not,
You never know.
Just let me grow in sunlight,
Soak some rain,
And whither in snow
To be birthed again as
The years roll on by.
I promise not to ask why
You are the way you are.
I'll ask you now,
Please do the same.
