Wait / Weight

I didn't mean to come to this quiet place

and upon these sacrosanct lines, erase.

I just... can't even begin to put to words

what goes on behind the shutter boards

of this shadow box I in jest name my heart.

The actors still have yet to learn their parts.

You require of me to set a stage

but I can't quite reach through this sturdy cage.

The knightly pieces all lack force to move

while I'm stuck here in a sullen groove.

It would surely my manic mind behoove

if I might be from this furrowed track removed.

But I'm afraid I'm mired here in shame

'til I reach the end of this ghoulish game.

As if the very cosmos decreed

that no one dare shall come or leave

until, at last, I fail to breathe.

Only then have I earned a fair reprieve.

Is it so much trouble to want a guide

if every dead end is another scar to hide?

Eventually there will be no more to bite

if you chomp so hard every time you're right

and I'm wrong, as I'm doomed to perpetuate.

But you try taking flight with all this weight

bound to your throat like a vile albatross.

Cursing my words to be naught but dross.

I just wanted, for a little while, to believe.

That I had a part to play in this ephemeral dream.

I've overstayed my welcome, or so it seems...

I guess it's about time to take my leave.

Go back to the drawing board, and try to conceive

whatever it is that you keep expecting from me.

Author's Note

This poem ended up a little... heavier than I desired it to be at its inception. I wanted to waive my arms in frustration at a feeling I've been having lately, of feeling desperately and hopelessly out of control of my own fate. It seems like, especially whenever I start figuring things out, my fingers' slip for a mere moment... and suddenly I'm back where I started. I know that's life, I know things rarely go as we planned, but dammit, it'd be nice if life felt like cooperating for once.

I'll leave explanations at that. I don't much enjoy spelling out my every motivation behind my writing, but the more I read this piece, the more compelled I felt to write that little blurb on it. Poetry is weird, or least the way I produce it is... even I don't understand how it comes into form sometimes. Like planting an apple seed and something brand new germinates. I've learned to nourish whatever comes out of the ground, rather than trying to mold it to my ego's whim.

Reviews

[Nolo Segundo]

Oh, I so agree with you about 'poetry is weird'-- mine seem to come of their own accord--from the soul i now suspect--and lately alas, they've not been 'visiting' this world....