no happiness in misery by ObsydianDreamer, literature
Literature
no happiness in misery
no happiness in misery (OR: My best friend died and I don't know what to do so I wrote a cento about it with Fall Out Boy lyrics) so, progress report: i am missing you to death, my best friend, dead and gone, and i want these words to make things right but i must confess, now that you’re gone, i try to picture me without you but i can’t, so now i’m just numb, bulletproof loneliness, wearing vintage misery, like i’ll never be the same, and i don’t want to forget how your voice sounds, (just off the key of sunshine riptide) and i need to keep you like this in my mind, wishing on every star, a cherry blossom about to bloom, the eighth wonder. and i could scream forever, as desperation takes hold, ‘cause i don’t know where you’re going, and i keep telling myself i'd trade all my tomorrows for just one yesterday, and i’m so sorry how talking's just a waste of breath. it’s kinda funny, that everything i wish for will never come true. so i lie in the grass, next to the mausoleum. we
(i)
I try to be tall sugar cane
weeping warm honey and milk
burning still;
my heart keeps telling me
who I really was before.
(ii)
I let you crawl inside
and we'll pretend that feeling rage
surging through your veins
where your sins laid
is black and white.
To the dandelion,
In this part of the world,
the heart of July is frigid.
Frost renders the clay-earth firm as concrete
while gusts from the snowies
raze any hope of warmth.
Things do not thrive here,
yet this is where fate cast your seed
and you, unwillingly, grew your roots,
and became mangled
by what should have nurtured.
But spoiler alert:
survival is no pretty thing.
You are no spring tulip,
no summer orchid,
no autumn rose.
Though it shames you now,
the day will come
where you are proud
of having grown
out of a crack in pavement.
and this you will learn by ObsydianDreamer, literature
Literature
and this you will learn
Know
that your
memories
are never in
the past tense, rather a consistent present.
The suffocating weight of events long
past forever
coating what
simply
was.
Yet
still you
struggle from
its grasp, vise-tight,
the visions too ugly to speak about.
Someday, the impossible burden
will not lift but
lessen. This
you must
know.
and last night I saw
seventeen thousand or more stars,
forged from glowsticks,
wristbands, and
smartphone flashlights,
rise from the cradle
of the hollywood hills
in memory.
and when they played,
we all screamed
and shouted along
to the lyrics,
like maybe if we were loud enough,
we could fix what had happened.
but it doesn't work that way,
hence the stars.
and i'm not sure whether this
was supposed to be an ode,
or a eulogy, or a group therapy session,
but there were more than seventeen thousand
of us there, holding stars,
and i don't think one of us felt alone.
so when i hear your voice
i'll remember to be kinder.
and i hope that makes
'maybe there's a god above' by ObsydianDreamer, literature
Literature
'maybe there's a god above'
The last time I prayed was in Notre Dame.
In truth, I hadn’t prayed to God for some time before that, my compulsive habit ceasing sometime during my treatment for depression and self-harm. I ended up in therapy that time by accident; mum walked into my room, and I didn’t have time to hide the cut and burn marks tracking up my thighs. She made me dress and forced me into the car. While going sixty along the back roads of town, she told me about my father’s abuse at the hands of the church. How his behaviour wasn't my fault, that it wasn’t anything I did that caused him to start drinking and abusing. How I should stop,
Freshly disowned in some frozen devotion, I prayed my mind.
Mustering some tender charm, not a trace of me would argue
about what my hands and my body done.
No tired sighs, no rolling eyes, no irony,
no better version of me I could pretend to be tonight.
In some sad way I already know I walk my days on a wire.
If the heavens ever did speak, it's carried by the sneering menagerie -
thrown here or found, to freeze or to thaw.
I knew that something would always rule me;
our teeth and lungs are lined with the scum of it.
Those who figure justice in fond memory: witness me.
I know who I am when I'm alone.
numbers + figures =/= everything by ObsydianDreamer, literature
Literature
numbers + figures =/= everything
For as long as I can remember
they have spoken of how the entire universe
can be simplified into equations;
e equals mc squared, pi, soh cah toa.
They speak as if the universe
is something to be solved,
not experienced.
Their equations do not factor in
human nature; how humans by and large
navigate by emotion,
not logic or proofs.
It’s an order constrained by rules
and one fundamentally flawed
when applied to anything
with a heart of its own.
Down here,
light has never existed
and colour is abstract.
Here, the bones rest.
Silence roars between
the breaths of antecessors
as what should be hard as rock
is soft as sponge.
Cold dread slithers
and drips down vertebrae.
In Dinaledi's cave,
something ancient dwells.