An ambient light’s flicker keeps the soft pulse of darkness beating at night;
It shines from your study, flaring higher as each page turns in your mind;
In pursuit of true wisdom, you torch both wax ends of joy and despair;
Alone in the madness, your morbid longings and dark secrets laid bare.
No one can miss your devilish wish to be enlightened and all-knowing;
But those who truly know knowing know there to be no total knowing;
Knowledge persists as inexhaustible, immortal, unbound, and undying;
You know this, of course, but infinity’s hurdle is one you’ll die climbing.
Under what stars endure, our whole waking world sits alone in the dark;
Natural order’s chaos in symmetry leaves us all with holes in our hearts;
Those blind to the heartache and misery pump blood that’s gone rotten;
To know the divine is to know well the darkness they’ve all but forgotten.
The Acheronian undercurrents surge through the psyche’s river of self;
While the curious one stands at the edges, under wicked twilight itself;
Resilience heals only scars you deem worthy when night turns to day;
To know the thrills of love, don’t let the heart’s scars become chains.
***
Trust the fine geometric lines of your tastes along every abnormal twist;
Keats speaks to you in autumn notes, rich shades of brown in the mist;
Verdant tints of forest vigor conceal your once bare walls and your doors;
A map of the heavens hangs in constellation with scribblings of Yore;
Books line the ground, line the wall, line the soul of the curiously inclined;
Death’s kiss leaves dried blossoms with a forever stain of beauty in time;
Once we wilt and snap like old stems to live only within frames on a wall;
The curious one sees tragedy not in death, but in never having lived at all.
Never feasting on what philosophy lurks in libraries and flea markets alike;
Never making love while Chopin serenades you under the bare moonlight;
To never have questions of the cosmos answered back to you in a dream;
And to never find God in rolls of film as they project onto a cinema screen.
So, curious one, pack your old soul in a bag before it knows any better;
Turn days into words you’ll write out by hand for loved ones in letters;
To tell the tale of your own secret history will be your greatest endeavor;
Go and be the one to alter existence so furiously that you live on, forever.
***