Author's Note: Random picture-prompt write. Saw this picture and it just instantly and easily inspired. Honestly, I don't see this poem as necessarily Nihilistic. Edgy maybe, the kind of darkly prosaic edgy that is part of me... but cathartic and useful in its own way. I believe this poem is meant to portray the self-damaging coping mechanisms that we humans often create to cope with destructive situations - or at least, that children do when placed into inappropriate and futile situations. Children of abuse - that's what my siblings and I were, and its a situation that far too many kids find themselves in at one time or another anymore. It IS sad...
Additional Note: Yes, the pictured seeds are, in fact, poke-weed seeds (I googled a shiny black seed to compare my crows eyes to and it popped up. And yes, the crimson juice shown from the berry seeds IS poisonous. Just thought it was cool and darkly appropriate.
Additional Note 2: I included a Footnotes/Glossary section at the bottom of this in case people get annoyed at the phrasing. I've been told that happens sometimes in my writing because the language/vocabulary and convoluted thought trails are too complicated. :S Sorry non-poetically minded readers should you be there. *cough* Ken! *cough* :)
The cackling crows reflection
It pecks and scratches at the white face of the moon
In her far-off screen of night, her late-night movie in the sky
So fair and distant and lovely
Too removed to feel this distant beat of wings against the breeze
The flutter against her shared sky
To hear the laughter that wants to be tears
The tears that wants to be laughter
The feeble try that the heart longs to live, fights not to die
So the ebony-feathered nomad mocks itself
Cackles like a mad raven who cannot help but see its own folly
And mourns the passing dream that appears so remote
To all but its beady staring eyes
Little poke-weed seed eyes that stare until they bleed wine
Into some forgotten whisper, on some forgotten day, some fragment of memory
That poisons the life-blood in its veins just enough to sicken, but never to completely kill
Such a lovely disguise the venom makes, its crimson-purple screen
A sweet and tart facade for grief's addictive, maleficent hold
What duty behind those shining beetle eyes?
To be the tragic hero of some Shakespearean tale?
To garner pity from the old souls alone who may spy it?
A requiem for some long-lost dream?
Or to laugh at yourself as the rainbow-sheened jester from some megalomaniacal(1) court
Not of your making
A court made for fools such as I, and such as you
The bandied joke of a ribald(2) monarch in palace of marble and stone
Vain, he calls you, vain
That you stare at your own reflection, your own misery
And you laugh in your own weeping face
'Die all, die merrily' as the saying goes
'Cry all, cry merrily'
Live, breathe, and die alone
Or join the hysterical laughter of the deliriously insane
Dig pits for yourself as they do in each other's company
Fall into snare's made by your own hands
No
No longer the insane monarch's stooge you shatter that grim effacing image
Shatter the glass surface of a mirror marked desolation
Scatter the ripples of the past
And fly free - FREE - to the bell-tower to sing
Sing triumphantly of your glorious, liberating flight
Beat the wings so long encased in inevitability's stone
Of 'expected's' steel patterns, those electric wire wrappings
Snap them as you cry out in refusal and rise!
Rise to the dawn and awaken!
Awaken from your long nights repose and breathe deeply for the first time...
Breathe... *thud-thud* Breathe...! *thud-thud*
Breathe! Then release your long-stilled voice in a new and verdant cry
Sing again!
Of a victory to shame the years of defeat
Allow the flush of pride to pale shame's fleeing shadows
And embrace the grace of the sun's first rise
Footnotes/Glossary (dictionary.com): - Since I have been told more than once by a friend that my vocabulary can make my poetry difficult to comprehend. It takes contemplation to understand anyway. *shrug* It doesn't to me, it just kind of comes out automatically and makes sense. If someone else had written it and I was trying to understand, I would be equally mentally pressed to figure it out, but for some reason it is just as easy as breathing to let it come out of my mind when I'm not really thinking about it. I wish everything were so easy. :p
(1) ~Ribald - (adjective)
1. vulgar or indecent in speech, language, etc.; coarsely mocking,abusive, or irreverent; scurrilous.
(2) ~Megalomaniacal - (noun) - Heard this word in an X-Files episode (Scully used it in reference to Mulder reminding her of Captain Ahab in Moby Dick)in high school and fell in love with it. Not the meaning - just the word itself and how it sounds. It sounds elegant and farcical at the same time.
1. Psychiatry. a symptom of mental illness marked by delusions of greatness, wealth, etc.
2. an obsession with doing extravagant or grand things.
