~*~*~
It was the candle flames that led
Me down the path of destruction.
The flames were dancing, inviting,
They were full of deception
Giving false hopes of warmth
At the end of a long winding road
When all that they led to
Was a cold dark cliff, crashing waves below,
And a silent jump into infinity.
While the dark path, less taken,
Led to that warm soft bed
And a roaring fire, a paradise,
Unheard of, never felt,
As the road leading there
Was cold and unlit.
~*~*~
~*~*~
“Why do you fear death?”
“Because I love life too much.”
“Though you know that this life means nothing? Though you know this world is just an illusion to turn you away from the path?”
“I believe in living for the moment, enjoying this life I’ve been given. Is it a sin to have fun? Is it a sin to enjoy worldly pleasures?”
“In fact, it is a sin if you forget your purpose. When death shall take you, none of this materialistic gain will save your soul from its fate.”
“Death is nothing I worry about. I have a long life. Why should I ruin the moment of my happiness by worrying about something that will come to me eras later? This doesn’t mean I do not fear death, for I do fear it and for this reason I disregard it as best I can.”
“You must worry about your soul’s fate if nothing else. Don’t let your happiness set a curse upon yourself. Death can either bring you salvation or eternal torment. It all depends on how you choose to live this life.”
“You do understand why I fear death. I’m afraid of that eternal torment, that life in what they call Hell. Maybe that’s why I choose to ignore it completely.”
“So you do accept the fact that you’ve been living a sinful life? If not, then why would you fear death and its eternal curse?”
“My life isn’t sinful, it’s just too happy. It’s too full of comforts, and this is what is the root cause of my fear. The materialistically happy die a gruesome death, suffering that eternal curse, that torture to the soul.”
“Once again you’re in denial. You regret your past, don’t you?”
“Mention not the forbidden.”
“You must wake up to reality and stop running away from your past. You must make amends for what you did back then, not waste the rest of your life away in sin. You must stop fearing death, and do the right thing. No one lives forever.”
“I’d like to tell myself that I will live forever. Yes, I will live forever. It’s easy for you to say, but even you know how difficult it is to fix your mistakes, fix your greatest sins.”
“Yet deep down inside you know the truth, no one lives forever. God isn’t cruel, he readily forgives those who apologize from their heart, who truly make amends for their sins. You still have time, you can still save your soul from the eternal curse bestowed upon you by your immature past.”
“I wish it were that easy, but you don’t understand. I have gone much too far in my life of sin and worldly comforts. Turning back now will not change the Lord’s mind about sending me to my curse.”
“Yes it will, if you make amends from the heart, you can still make it to the Palace in Heaven. If one has the willpower they can even move the very mountains. Saving your soul is much easier than that. If you want, I’ll be your guide in the process.”
“You cannot change the course of destiny. My soul was destined to be doomed, and it will be, no matter what I do. Plus I have gone so far into my lifestyle that I’ll never be able to let myself turn back. Even if you guide me, I know I’ll let you down.”
“You never were optimistic, were you? If you have the willpower, you can achieve anything, anything in the world.”
“My will is broken, long cast away. What can I do now?”
“Rebuild it.”
“It’s not that easy my friend. Nothing ever was, ever is, and ever will be.”
“Give up your sinful life.”
“I cannot. My family depends on its support. I cannot let them down. I cannot let the people who depend on me down. What I once did for myself is now being done for them. You would expect me to give up all my sinful money as well, and I’m afraid I cannot do that. I cannot take their support away from them. I’m sorry.”
“So you can sell your soul to the Devil, but you cannot start over again? Why do you fear death when you know you won’t do anything to change your fate? Death comes to all, some choose to change, and some don’t. Those who fear death work hard to change their fate, but you refuse to do any such thing. Why? Do you fear change even more? Or is it that you are just playing with me right now, pretending to fear death?”
“Why do you play with my mind in this way? Can’t you just let me be?”
“I’m only trying to help you. You still haven’t answered my question. Do you fear change more than you fear death?”
“I do not fear change, I fear failure. What if I do not succeed in changing my fate?”
“You will meet the same fate you are deemed to meet if you do nothing at all.”
“But there will be that shadow, that feeling of darkness, continuously nagging me, telling me I’m a failure.”
“No, there will be that voice which will tell you that at least you tried rather than just giving up right at the start. Just think, what if you succeed? Won’t that be the best thing ever? It’s better to fail in doing something rather than regretting never having done it.”
“You speak as if you have already conquered your fate and changed it. Have you?”
“I once committed a serious crime as well. Hard to believe now, isn’t it? Most who have heard this or know this, find it hard to believe. I have changed beyond recognition, I have changed so much, I myself find it hard to believe I once did what I did.”
“What is it that you did?”
“Would you really like to know?”
“Yes, yes I would. It cannot have been worse than my crime.”
“You’ll be surprised. Your crimes are nothing compared to mine. I was a murderer, a cold-blooded murderer. Escaped from prison, yes. I was a threat to the world, but I was religious at the same time. This is what saved me and made me who I am today.”
“When you killed, you didn’t remember you were a religious man?”
“When I killed, all I knew was that I had to see the bloodshed. It was a rampant rage, a furious vengeance. I still remember the day, that day long ago, it was a cold January morning in the year 1968. I was hardly seventeen when I took my revenge from the people who took my father’s life when I was a mere child.”
“You had a reason to kill though, it wasn’t cold-blooded murder! It was only revenge for what had happened years earlier.”
“Ah but you see, I killed his whole family, even the two year old child. If this isn’t plain cruelty, then what is? I was caught red-handed, and I was sentenced to death. I still remember the torment of death row. Yet I escaped and found my way to a church.”
“Church? Now I understand what you meant by religious.”
“No, I went there knowing I would find refuge if I confessed my crime to the Priest. This I did, and the blessed Priest changed my life forever. I left my country and started my life all over again. So you see, it isn’t impossible to make amends. Your sins aren’t nearly as bad as mine were. It’ll be so much easier for you to make a new start.”
“What you say is really hard to believe. Yet I know you speak the truth. Tell me, how long did it take you to make your peace with your fate?”
“I’m still in the process of it.”
“You see, I don’t have a whole lifetime left ahead of me to make amends. All will fail, I just know it.”
“My dear friend, you don’t need a whole lifetime to correct your mistakes. Did you murder anyone? No you didn’t, you just lived a corrupt life. Trust me when I say that is not nearly as bad as homicide. I need a whole lifetime to make amends, you just need a few years.”
“And if I fail?”
“Your position cannot get any worse than it is now.”
“I see you make sense. One thing I don’t understand is why you want to help me so much? I did nothing for you, in fact, I hardly know you. Are you just using me to help you make peace with the Lord?”
“Now, now my dear friend, I have known you for a whole year. How much longer should I know you to be able to help you? Plus you do realize that every good or bad thing a person does is purely because he has a selfish cause, don’t you? You are right about me just using you, but you do know that it will do you good as well, thus you will let me use you.”
“What you just said says a lot about your personality.”
“Is that so? Like what?”
“You’re not as chaste as you seem to be, friend. You are not as pure and religious as you claim to be.”
“You’re a clever chap, no one has ever recognized that part of me as yet. I’m beginning to think you’re a bit too clever.”
“Am I supposed to take that as a compliment?”
“You’re a fool of a person! You should know by now I do not flatter my victims. I’m surprised you have figured out an important point in my personality but you haven’t guessed exactly why I am here.”
“Victims? You do mean friends, right? Anyways, you’re here to change my life from what you’ve been telling me. You’re here to remove my fear of death, my fear of the dark.”
“Yes, that is by taking your life…” From under his shirt he pulled out a pistol and shot a bullet into the man’s forehead, killing him instantly. “Now you shall never fear death my good friend, you shall never fear the dark.”
~*~*~
So the above is a piece I wrote years ago, and going over it the other day, I kind of liked parts of it. I removed certain parts that sounded lame to me.
~*~*~
The demons of our past stand naked,
Running free through the fields of our mind.
And we hide, we hide from ourselves,
This past which cannot be denied.
The ranger passes through, singing,
And the mist does slowly disappear.
Yet the demons go on cowering,
In these songs we hold so dear.
Raging through the wild dust storms,
These demons bring naught but strife.
Lurking, waiting, to pounce upon us,
As we go about trying to live this short life.
The rain pours, and the willow whispers,
Yet all that can be heard are the voices.
These demons, always screaming in the head,
Of the past, and once made choices.
Exhaustion seeps into the mind so silently,
Exacerbating the insanity within these thoughts.
The demons feed with such power,
The battle seems lost even before it has been fought.
Somewhere along the paths of destruction,
Lie the shadows that evolve from the light.
And these demons striving so hard to kill from within us,
Too must die at the hands of the fading night.
~*~*~
I bow down to the demons,
For I was but a truant,
Waiting in the darkness,
Never stepping into the light.
~*~*~
And fellow bloggers and readers, I am back! I am just too much in love with writing to take a break. Glad the phase is over, glad that I could make up my mind.
~*~*~
A bloodless strife hung heavy in the air,
The strain of which left me weakened.
The flash of anger, the screaming,
Were reduced to echoes in my head,
As I silently watched the blood drip,
Down my hands, like blade on ice.
The world gave a shudder,
As the will of my being broke apart.
It was the wounds that tore me apart,
Growing like a cancerous tumor.
The scars of loving you, never quite erased,
Off the face of my stitched up heart.
Oh the anger, it was always the anger,
Or it was the psychosis of my mind?
The lands cracked under pressure,
As the strain of living, deep inside, surfaced.
Weary grows the idle mind, weary with rust,
The cracks deepen, till it crumbles into dust.
When was the first weapon planted,
Deep beneath the layers of this love?
It was a silent killer, slowly spreading like a virus,
Until it consumed all there was to take.
The oceans fight a raging storm,
The ship is sinking, down, down it goes.
There remains no structure to lean on,
No spark of life to keep me hanging.
Falling, I am falling, deep into the ocean,
As the waves crash me upon the rocky shore.
Your voice whispers inside my mind,
“It was only the calm before the gathering tempest.”
The bullets shoot across the battlefield,
I was hit long before it rained.
Life is a battlefield, which never sleeps,
For even in dreams, the bombs fly artfully.
The haunting sound of your silence overwhelms,
As I writhe in pain, waiting as the tears stream down my face.
If only you understood the working of my mind,
Or maybe I was the one who never saw the torment of yours.
The volcano erupts in a flare of burning vice,
Smothering completely all in its path.
Your scrutiny of my being, of my body, mind, and soul,
Was only a dissection of that which you do not know.
For you never chose to see me as more than a shadow of myself,
But termed what you did see as the body of a shadow.
If you see the fire as a form of destruction,
You will only have the ability to destroy.
And destroy you did, with your single act of kindness,
That fine thread which tied my heart to yours.
~*~*~
~*~*~
Shimmering, shimmering in the wind,
Like tassels hanging from the boughs of trees.
The drunken air, heavy with a mist of innocence,
Brushing away softly with a gentle breeze,
The sadness lingering in the heart of shadows.
Long ago did the darkness lift,
Taking with it the essence of living.
Beckoning, beckoning the memories from long ago,
The scarlet drops of pain glistening in the sun,
Lovingly merging the present and the past,
In an embrace fabricated for perpetual silence,
As the world quivered with a single silent sigh.
Long ago did the darkness lift,
All the Just chose to follow.
Sinking, sinking nonchalantly into the bowels of the earth,
The pungent fragrance permeating into the atmosphere
Songs of burden lie at the beak of song birds,
Lethargically lulling all life to sleep,
With the cacophony of dullness heavy in the air.
Long ago did the darkness lift,
The earthen beauty fell into an unbreakable sleep.
Forgetting, forgetting the future yet to come,
Was it an abandoned wish, or a memory lost?
The sands of space and time in disarray,
And chaos did let loose a white offering of peace,
Wrecking havoc in the form of tranquility.
Long ago did the darkness lift,
With it went all songs of Harmony.
Shivering, shivering in the rivers of belligerent strife,
The shadows mourn naked in the light,
Stripped of all but the shame they hold.
Without darkness, how can one know light?
Such is the tale the shadows believe.
Long ago did the darkness lift,
But the shadows stayed behind.
Longing, longing for necessity,
Screaming quietly for the triumph of truth,
But what is truth without lies to confirm them?
Where does one hide from a fiery sun?
What is good without a breath of evil?
Long ago did the darkness lift,
But with it so did the light…
~*~*~
~*~*~
Bow down to your fears in awe,
Quickly take out an iron dagger,
And stab each one to death.
For fear is merciless when touched
By the breath of a coward,
Cruel and demented, when eyes shy away.
Fear cuts at the slightest sign of weakness,
Like no scar a knife can leave,
The will breaks, scattering like shards of glass.
Fear seeps silently through the darkness of the mind,
Ubiquitous is its hunger,
As even the faintest trace of light is extinguished.
Fear is carried by the wings of the wind,
Like a parasite, growing larger,
As it drains the life from the body of its host.
Thus, give in to fear, but let fear not know
The face of a craven,
Lest a wish to be scourged for eternity lies on your lips.
For fear cuts deeper than sticks and stones. *
~*~*~
* This line is not entirely original. The original line is “Fear cuts deeper than swords” by George R. R. Martin in his A Song of Ice and Fire series. I found that line very inspiring, though the concept of this poem came to me far before I read the series.
~*~*~
It was a matter of right and wrong,
A matter of truth and lies,
A matter of justice and injustice.
Yet still did evil triumph over good,
And the world rejoiced.
“Morality is to be shot,”
They said,
“Like the murder of a mocking-bird,”
And the world rejoiced.
We are but sacrifices on the altar of greed.
~*~*~
Darkness creeps into the veins of mortals,
Silently humming a song of mourning,
As it carves into the heart a mark of evil.
All that is left is pain,
Shooting through blackened veins,
Like trying to breathe underwater.
Life hangs by a fine thread of darkness,
As a Hobson’s Choice is given to all mortals,
Do evil or accept water in place of air.
~*~*~
I am the darkness, the darkness me,
What no light can pierce for all of eternity…
‘Twas but a silent song I sung with eloquence that night,
Which brought with it unrequited love,
And the will to give up this life.
The music in the air did fill this forsaken heart,
To stone it turned so fast, my love, love it was no more.
Unfathomable Darkness fell, abysmal was the light.
The tears came shining through inconspicuously,
These tears as black as night.
They fell, they burned, so silently, aghast that they exist.
Yet, who could see these tears so black, in darkness that persists?
The aim was precise, the arrow sharp,
It split the black heart, one half a mirror image of the other.
Slowly they crumbled, until nothing was left,
A dark chill filled the night air, a chill that lingered on for eternity.
And the arrow was lost in the abyss of yore.
Unfathomable Darkness fell, abysmal was the light.
Forever walk all broken souls, under the starry sky.
The moonlight creeps, as darkness streaks,
But even swindled rays from the moon cannot rupture,
The air that reeks of this infinite darkness.
A heart once crushed, can weep no more,
As a shattered vase must remain empty of flowers.
How broken glass cuts, drawing dark blood,
So do the minute fragments of the heart pierce the soul.
Yet this I ask, what blood hath the soul to offer?
Unfathomable Darkness fell, abysmal was the light.
This shattered heart brought darkness deep into my life,
‘Tis my soul which is left empty to the very brim.
Shrouded by these voices, chanting over and over again,
As the stench of death hangs heavy in the darkened sky.
‘Twas the death of a life I once dared to wish for,
The end of all dreams, one can say.
I was plunged into waves of the blackest darkness,
Which turned into a Tsunami and destroyed my banks.
Where do I go for relief, where do I go to recover?
Unfathomable Darkness fell, abysmal was the light.
I could watch the shadows dance, in the black of night.
A heart once mended can never work as well as one born new.
Like the boughs burdened with cherry blossoms,
This obscurity of the past weights down upon me, oh, so cruel.
I am the darkness, the darkness me,
What no light can pierce for all of eternity…
Oh, dear dreary darkness of this dreadful life. Will thou not let the drudgery of thy mind be washed away with the rays of the sun? Let it shine through the cracks of the walls thou built within thine head, let the rays with their own force, break apart these walls, and let in the fresh air. This damp and deeply pungent scent in the air, banish it with the warmth of thy mind opening up to accept the golden rays. Oh, dear dreary darkness of this dreadful life…when will thee let in the light?
Aye, this eternal sadness of the mind inflicts upon thee a sickness, the curse of a broken heart. The agony becomes ubiquitous, flowing into every crack and imperfection of thy mind. Oh, if only our minds were immaculate, such that the despair, desperately looking for a hiding place, would find none and slip off the surface like water on glass.
Love dies the death of a miscreant, yet with it lies dead the hero, Trust. We never fall for the villain’s treachery twice, but when the death of a dream takes place, when all Trust is lost, what will aid this broken heart? When all Trust is lost, with whom do we grieve this shattered heart? Say a day comes in our life, when we find we cannot even bank upon ourselves, what is it that we must do? Must we sink into the ground and die a desired death?
If we were such stuff that dreams are made of, then the empty heaviness of the heart would not matter. The heart would lie silent, subdued by the stars sparkling in the night sky. The whispers in the air would bring comfort, a longing to live a wonderful life, even if the life demands we must live it alone. Dreams would carry us in their arms, sing us a lullaby, and soften our eyelids with faint traces of star-dust. Aye, but the dreams have broken, leaving us empty and cold. Why live this life with a broken heart and shattered dreams? Why go on?
Alas, the heart lies tattered and torn, in the darkness of a new moon night. The dreams lie strewn haphazardly, shivering on the snow-covered ground. All that is heard echoing in the silence of the depths of time is a faint whimper, then deafening silence once again…
Inside the Mind of a Lunatic 