Moments of Darkness (Poetic Device)

A rattle; a shudder.
I turn and face... nothing.
For a fleeting moment,
Confusion reigns.
I pause, then pick up
The threads of today.  
A life - infused with colour,
Discourse, demands and distractions -
Drowns out what I know deep down is real.
Later, in the stillness,
It beckons me again,
Only this time in silence.
A presence rather than a sound
Draws me back towards the box.
It's been a while;  
I'd almost dared to hope
Its grip on me had vanished;
That the power within had died.
 
When those weary days were done,
I placed them all inside the box.
Their minutes spent; their hours full -  
Too full to hold inside one mind;
Too intense for a mortal to contain
Their colours rich and dark
As images swirled and merged and pooled like blood.
Summer scenes of countryside and friends
Turned ghoulish on the pages
As the ink spread out to reveal
The images of nightmares.
I picked them up and folded them together,
Their burnished edges catching at my fingers
Even as I gently folded the pages,
Stroking them closed
As though to calm the horrors within.
I placed them in the box
With plenty of space to breathe.
I sealed the box with steely threads
Fashioned from Determination and Will,
Then tucked it away on top of a cupboard
Where it would now remain
Quite pacified; no longer volatile.
And then, with time,
It grew silent, still.
The pages' fractious energy was spent -  
Burnt out -  
And life could once again resume.
 
I stand, and pace the room
Face upturned to survey the box.
Its contents draw me inexorably:
They will not rest
Until I reach inside
And view them once again
In the fresh light of today.
I tremble now, unsure what I will find.
Have the colours mellowed with age;
The images composed themselves  
With the benefit of hindsight?
Or will those pages once again unleash
The horrors they once held?
One thing I know for sure:
I will crack open the box
And peek through cautious fingers at the pages within
Before they burst their shackles
And explode from the box all by themselves.
 
So this is how it goes:
All that is left to do is be courageous
And to open it.

Depression, akin to a common fly,
emits a dull buzzing that protrudes the skull.
 
Still it does so with, in it own way,  
beauty,
to decompose that which was once living beneath the flesh.
 
A buzzing, a tearing, a gnawing into skin
into flesh
 
A maggot? An egg? A thought in my head?
 
Once you lay down to accept the dead. They hatch, slither, encroach, leaving you like lead.
For why else would a fly bore into unneeding flesh and retake whats left in the bones.
 
Nearly hollow enough now.
Gouged , consumed, recreated.
 
Soon to fly, to be one of them.
Maybe that is the answer to the end.
 
Where we are and where we've once been.
We'll become the maggots festering within the bones of a friend.
We, as well as depression, a fly on the wall, soon to lead our friends to the decaying fall

I masked the hurt with anger and looked for revenge in the most spiteful way,
Not knowing that from that day forward everything would completely change, 
And in some strange way I didn’t grasp the damage it would do to all of us, 
You grew angrier and I somehow found my strength buried under all the rubble. 
But first I had to dig through all the debris, the guilt, the everlasting shame, 
Taking all the blame because it didn’t really matter who set it off at first, 
Because your verse will always be different than mine, I know I did wrong, 
But as long as I had my baby boy, even though I was lost I still had hope. 
I didn’t want you back, 
How could I? I wouldn’t want myself back if I had done that to me, 
And no matter how you see it, I too was so hurt the way it all went down, 
Razed to the ground, we were a mess but those were the choices we made, 
Had I stayed, there was no telling how much worse it would have gotten. 
Maybe it was for the best, we had grown apart and my heart wasn’t in it, 
It was my fault, I never should have started, I should have been more honest, 
I broke all those promises when I strayed away and brought your wrath, 
It was a bloodbath, 
But you knew me, I was that type of guy to help you build it and then destroy it. 

 
(ii.)
July 2019—  
 
 
it's within seconds,    
perhaps less  
and i'm comfortably lost    
   
wayward and winding    
twisting through curves    
a soaring float without end    
upon a 'something'    
   
a mind's version    
this, my ethereal misty    
   
being lighter than    
ever before  
my husk and i    
traveling so high    
   
an inner voice,    
the one  
of non-stop nagging    
quieted now  
   
only one sound—  
blood rushing in veins    
or maybe soft winds    
brushing against cooled skin    
   
senses dull a bit  
   
i can smell  
sweet earth  
and taste the harsh reality of iron    
   
feeling a heartbeat    
that slows,    
unnoticed    
   
pain morphs  
to a grey blue    
as any  
and all panic disappears    
   
danger dissolves    
it all becomes alright    
clear, crystallized  
no fear no doubts    
   
only a small sadness    
that i would never see you    
or have you know.  
   
   
   
as i felt it all    
less    
   
   
and    
   
   
   
   
   
less  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

The bird of hermes
No complete metamorphosis shall take place
Forever cocooned inside, never to see the light
Fallen prey and victim to circumstances

The bird of hermes

Wings eaten never to sprout and touch the sky
An incomplete Birth
Beauty never to be seen
Endless colours never to reflect the light
And take pride in the marvel that comes

An abortion of thought
A decay of state,
A life never to be lived
Dreams never to be realised
A barren flicker of hope
An parallel flaw in the course of nature
Done and never undone

The bird of hermes

A born blasphemy to God,
Punished for no sin
No light to touch the face
From the obyss to the grave
From emptiness to damnation

The bird of of hermes
Wings clipped to keep me tame