Scarlet

Hard to top some of my previous ones, but I suppose this poem is still decent. I hope you enjoy reading it, if you'd like. Somewhere between love and death.

A shepherd to the scarlet waltz

Lost sheep wolfing down the moon

Turn the sun into a rearview mirror

Wet your palette lick my wounds and let your tongue paint a picture in my mind

I can feel the blood bend pendulums

Into a twisting river of my screaming tongue

I can hear the breathing of a wounded goat

I have sacrificed, offered so much, that altar, fate

My faith is a dead religion in the ground

My words are a sermon to the mute

My song is another vinyl field to flock to

I cut myself on the ridges of my heart

Sometimes it is better to bleed

Than to fade, like a polaroid

Pictures in a gallery of memories

Thoughts pumping through the engine of a beating heart

My efforts are not in vein

My efforts are not in artery

We all share the same blood

Do not pretend to wash your hands dry

You will stay scarlet

Or you will fade with me

Until there is no colour left in this world

For you to wash yourself clean from

And I will suffer, only for your mistakes

And your lack of suffering

Lack of understanding

What a mistake

How mistaken

You are

I did not always need to dye

Your hands are now

A great work of art

For everyone will see the painter I am

In you

Do not hide from the beauty of the moon rippling on the waters

As many times as you dip your hands in the river trying to reach the stars

You will remain but a reflection on the crossroads

Only to be seen

In another’s presence

When someone sees themselves for who you are

As those who you hold no candle to

Will never enlighten their own shadow of the inner workings of that hell

Or else they would be nothing but the lacking

The emptiness of the sun

Yet another cold person in a lukewarm world’s canvas

Domino’ing megalomanic lanterns of obscure arts

Brushing lush lusty luscious lustrousness into the crevices of the walls

Until we all crawl crimson

Dragonfly alibies without wings

In the polycrystalline prisms

Of our off-tone monochrome kaleidoscopic claustrophobia  

Star-spangled scythe of a mindless maestro

And come equipped with gibberish when we rip hearts from the chrysalis

Drunk on sanguine eulogies and tongue-tied lullabies

And cherry bomb fairy-tales of the wine you have spilt here  

That still smells like fermented death

Falling in love with the deterioration of a long-time broken world

Piecing together my mosaic of you

Sometimes I cry

Too

It hurts to be so fragile

To rip open the stomach, so that the butterflies are free

Born from something else made empty as the night sky

What’s left of an unkept destiny

Bury me in the abyss of heaven

Some day I’ll be free

My cloud body blossoming into a blood-moon’s sunset

Ending to start tomorrow’s journey

In artery

In vein

The parched cement enveloping me

Like another world

Brave, and new, and dead

Folding freshly ironed wings into my Sunday best

I don’t want to fly anymore

I don’t think I could

Even if I wanted to

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.