Mementos

A poem on how things change in life, and how hard it is to accept those circumstances.

Mementos

 

I walk out of the fortress and am without any touch

But the spit that prickles my skin

Feeling the wind blow spectres of the past

Through my mind’s wingspan like a drug

I do not live in the present day

A silhouette of the figures drowning in the darkness

I am simply a memento of the innocence

That bloodstains every page in my journal

Trying to walk past your life is difficult when it can be so easily taken

Like a treasure I took out of my chest

Aand lay my beating heart upon the grass to rest before you

I have to guard my tongue lest it ties the knot with my stomach

Eating away at the butterflies

To speak or to swallow your words

Open mouths are bullets that rain like fire, tongues recoil

But still I walk, because they once stood beside me, those souls

I stole from those who deserved nothing but the heel of my shoe

I do not regret stepping on all these eggshells

All this concrete grace growing familiar

Standing on the ends of earth’s face

Cracking a smile at my silence

There was a time my father and I would go out

And race our little toy boats near the lake

I would wander by on the fields of viridian gold

Settling suns tethered to the meadowlands

Reflections I see in the puddles of my promised land I no longer own

Grandfather bright and beaming

I knew that even when synaesthesia's dreamland disappeared

I still would sleep sound, the off-tune melody would find me there

In this place where the forest stood

Before they built their houses from the corpse

Before I was born to die fighting

Battling demon’s that exorcise their power over God

I don’t prey anymore, there is no flesh to bury

Marionettes of carrion wept for the pieces of the puzzle

To reveal themselves found

When I lost it all, whole in my heart

Maggots on my sleeves

I realized I was bringing up the same past I buried so long ago

Raising myself like my own childhood was still stagnant as the clear water

Digging through the memories until I couldn’t get the blood

From underneath my fingernails off

Until my hands built sandcastle civilizations bound to die early to the storm's waves

And my memories had died early too

And so

I walked out of this fortress, this psych ward

This prison, this hospital, this hell

I beat mountains to the ground

And left them grovelling in the dirt and still

Made my way along the lake

Touching the stones between me death, and God and

Wore dialogue of every sentence heard with my ears

Like the headphone halos of a Rorschach's masquerade 

The abstract words of every missing second uncrowned

The taste of security, the sound of clarity

All mine, my treasure, my present open inside out in a gallery of works

For the world could catch these hands of the clock itself for all I care

I wore the weight of the world as if these chains that bind me were feathery wings

Playing the fool while dealing with the devils’ whims

Rebellion swims under my skin

The fabric of history was cut from the same cloth

So follow suit with these blood ties

I wear my heart on my sleeve

These threads sown shut the picture frames

I will not take an axe to the forest

I plant the seeds

Elysium’s double-helixes reaped by phoenixes of conclaves’ cremation

Growing stronger than the axe

Until the sun upon my back

Reigns its sainthood painted on the wall

Lit infinity’s Morningstar séance

Unendingly hallucinogenic splendour lost in Eden

Oaktree’s of hanging freedom bleeding free from the rhyme and reason

I walk the edge of limbo’s symphony

Mithril crypts hieroglyphic in my crucifixion as a missionary

Gods that pray upon the weak, shackled to, I speak, I wear my leash for peace

Even the butterflies will go still as water someday, in the eternal blaze

Eyes glazed over like my heart of spades, infernos of rain dropping apocalypses slain

Braid my wounds in aluminum, bioluminescent ruminations glaciers of aether

Walking towards the sky, waiting for my time, I am the next in line

To walk on the edge of life and death, balancing Valkyries of malachite isolation

Keep my space, you’ll have your time, eventually, I’ll run out rhymes

Reasoning with my divide, cut down from the inside

Memento’s of the sentimental lie

Wounded by pride

Ravens blessings flying by

Iridescent death my only bride

Walking on this path

The wrath an empty church at midnight mass

The nightshade bows to king’s unknown

Beowulf fringing on oblivion’s throne

I make my way back to my home

I have but these empty memories to warm my hollow bones’

The lullaby that taunts my angered soul

Mangled by the rose

Mementos stalk an empty road

I foster clockwork octaves, steampunk crows

Grasping asters at a past-lit grove

Paper scribbled dribbling in sins' incubus, wrinkled, crumpled, torn

Strangled by my thorns

Wear the bangles of a unicorn

Forsworn to the swarm of devil horns

Pebbles, pawns, strands of gold amidst the straw

Bands of swan among the hawks

To which the highest mountain flock

Violets peak into my thoughts

Islands reap their queens of hearts

Actors play their only parts

Until the theatre seats go dark

And these people leave their marks

Become the fire in the hearth

Every choir needs a church

Sired violins of birth

Upon the highest sin to perch

Or in the belly of this earth

Singing a melancholy dirge

Empty venom for the worms

Dowsed in penance, the medicine of words

 

Author's Note

I promise I read every single review, and I generally will reply to them. I look forward to my next review, because it helps me learn. Even if it's just one word, I promise, I will be happy to hear anything you feel needs sharing. Whenever you write on my shortcomings or breakthroughs, or the themes of my poems, or share ideas and friendly criticism, it decides my next poem to an extent. I will listen, learn and be thankful. And 99% of the time, you'll get a reply unless you're trolling me.