The Muse of One with a Broken Heart.

A brief poem that embodies my muse.

A youth.

Tall. Swathed in a dark cloak.

A mustache hangs on his thin, sallow face.

Unruly brown hair shoots outward

from underneath

his large black hat.

Strange;

He is indoors.

 

He sits alone.

Alone by matter of

Decision

and Circumstance.

Alone

In a chair of green velvet,

 deep in blissful thought.

Odd.

Though odd is to him

As normality is

To those that march the city streets

In obsidian suits.

 

Presently, thunder crashes stridently

amid his abode.

Abode?

No.

It is a lair. A castle.

Gothic in architecture,

Sullen in nature.

 

He looks up from where

his eyes were locked, traversing the words

of a work of Poe.

An empty bottle slides

from his fingers.

He smiles.

Thunder,

that horrendous crackling of electric power,

soothes him.

 

Then the rain begins.

It falls in heavy sheets

onto the stone out-layer

of his castle.

His smile rescinds.

He feels the melancholy settle in

as the sky-water pours down

from the heavens.

Like a blanket

on which rests

the sins of the world.

 

His burden has returned.

His escape was temporary.

A ponderous thought falls gracelessly

onto his soul.

 

A tear rolls from his eye.

Runs down his cheek.

A slow, tragic course

which

many of its brethren

have traveled.

“Why?!” he cries

to the fireplace.

No one listens.

 

2.

He continues

his vain tirade.

“Why must I

carry the burden

of this mind? Of the world?

It is not mine

to hold!

Leave me, and allow me

to take pleasure

in my youthful days!”

 

Silence.

He leaps from the chair of jade velvet,

quickly, angrily, burdensomely.

And with so much a forewarning

as precedes an earthquake,

he casts the Poe composition,

into the yellow flames

of the fireplace.

 

As the soft paper

of the verses burns,

he falls,

like a robin-ling from its nest,

to his knees.

Spectacles slide from the bridge of his nose

to the floor.

In reality,

the sound of their impact

is insignificant, tiny, diminutive.

But to him,

it is deafening.

It is the sound

of his heart shattering.

A thousand times.

 

3.

With no comfort

in sight,

he rushes to his dresser,

slides open the foremost drawer

with great force,

and withdraws

a small, empty

journal.

Blank.

Like his aspirations. His desires.

He dashes back to his spot in the

now-rotted, lackluster

velvet armchair.

He takes no notice of its altered state.

 

He sits,

heavily, tiredly.

Extracts shakily a pen

from a pocket

of his cloak.

With not another whim or thought,

he pours his broken soul

into that

bare journal.

It is the lonesome work

of a broken spirit

attempting to mend itself.

Time loses him

in the scratching of the pen

on the void, white pages.

 

4.

And as he sits in that solitary position,

he composes a newborn outline

of his heart

with words.

When he has finished

this fraught task,

he leans back

into the completely degraded,

uncolored,

velvet chair.

And in one slow, languid motion

he turns his head

and peers into the mirror that stands

beside the chair.

 

Pen and pad fall from his hands.

Two empty orbs gaze back at him.

White hair peeks from beneath

a tattered hat.

He is a shell of his former self.

An old man.

Author's Note

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