Opium and Opera

When the Opium wears off,
my bones begin to ache
at every passing breeze,
my muscles succumb to gravity’s will,
and my skin is a blanket of pain.

When the Opera finally ends,
the silence is
as deafening as a drowning violin,
as lonely as a lost feather
floating on wandering wind,
as painful as heartache and heartburn,
and as uncomfortable
as undersized undergarment,
woven of wool, and worn
not in winter,
but in the stare of the summer sun.

When the cakes have all been eaten
and the wine has all been drunk,
I’m a starving lion in a plastic jungle,
I’m the insatiable leviathan
sinking ship after abandoned ship,
I’m the salmon who drank the river dry,
I’m the sailor who swallowed the sea,
and the emperor who ate the earth,
country by country,
from crust to core.

When love has waxed cold
and passion has left,
winter walks everywhere
and screams with each step,
my lost lover’s face is seen in each breath,
crystals condense
on my heart and my hands,
and the night is as dark
as a stranger’s shadow.

When my golden palace turns to lead
and my silver veins bleed out,
I’m a beggar at the temple gate;
tattooed with sinners’ symbols,
cursing in a foreign tongue;
clothed in the color
of a forbidden faction.
I’m chief of
the council of handsome statues,
in a town full of bashful ghosts,
with an army as weak
as the quench of the sea,
and whose coin
is as worthless as promises.

When the Opium wears off
and the Opera finally ends,
our reality is too real to know,
the truth is too complex to comprehend,
the pain goes beyond
what our threshold can fathom,
and the silence is as loud as death.