To Make My Peace With You: All I Ever Tried to Do

All I Ever Tried to Do

You lent me your ears but now you want them back
My hands are empty, like my pockets and my hat
I never took what you have lost
It slipped through each finger
Refusing to be caught

And you can’t remember what had come before
You deny accepting the invitations you still hoard
And so you wear the progeny like a dresser missing a drawer
Furnishing the hour with a vacuous rapport
The price of lidless honesty

You say to me that misery is all I ever propagate
"Avoid the void that has destroyed the joy your memories confiscate"
And I don’t know what’s dutiful
Nor pretend to know what’s true
But to paint the darkness beautiful
That’s all I ever tried to do

I find no answers in the elder and renown
Like a red death, my thoughts unnerve every crown
But still the clattered crystal laugh
Baptizes blasphemy
In a champagne bubble bath

And so I find you prized among the bourgeoisie
And here you find me, bleeding on their balcony
Disheartened, all of my passions have emptied out of me
Your pity throws a skinned man to the sea
You suggest, almost mockingly:

“Why can’t you paint a portrait of the glory and the majesty?”
All pessimists are cynical but a realist is heresy
Ah, but I don’t know what’s dutiful
Nor pretend to know what’s true
Just to paint the darkness beautiful
That’s all I ever tried to do

I’ve worn my welcome to these banquets of moths
Till tattered thrashings find no more their quaint applause
Replaced now with delayed alarm
They cover up their children’s eyes
Cast forth to hold the guard

So now, Cassandra, may I have this dance?
The aborted golem’s climbing up the hourglass
The streets are roaring with the silence of a question unasked
For its answer’s in the details of the crash
And I know not how to look away

So if I am a sinner then someday I’ll face that fate
And If I am a monster then my slayer I await
If your rapture comes, I’ll bid you well when sails your mighty ship
Or sing a dirge if by false words you board the Titanic
Cause I don’t know what’s dutiful
Nor pretend to know what’s true
But to paint the darkness beautiful
That’s all I’ve ever tried to do




April 29, 2007