Drifting

Fish can swim upstream, but I cannot

River flooded with unshed tears

Carries the dust of dead dreams

Fish can fight the flow

I, much less than fish in a stream

 

I am only the ghost of a man

Who never learned how to swim

In the sharp whitewater rapids

Of my consequences, my decisions

 

Beautiful starlight of the Fallen

Illuminates sweet crystal drops of dew

But the dew turns to ice

But the stars are too late, too few

 

Because I, too, am Fallen

As from his God, Lucifer hast fell

Society’s made of me an animal

To be hunted, caged, and quelled

 

This wall will protect them all

From my brutish, indiscriminate savag’ry

If I were a fish, I’d swim under the wall

But I, not able to so easily be free

 

I, a victimless victim of victim’s sin

Am now but a stray, unpruned weed

In the sunken, well-tended garden

Of the essence of humanity

 

Hubris, always, the fatal flaw

Drew angry rain from a sunny day

Wrath of the heavens is forever upon me

And so I go, when I could stay

 

I’ll lay me eternally, lovingly down

On a thorny throne of snow-white rose

And lead me from this darkness

And lead my from these woes

 

As my river of unshed tears

Carries away the dust of my dead dreams

Fish can fight the inexorable flow

But why be forever struggling upstream?

 

And so I drift.