An Ode

From a wink and a smile
I thought she would stay
But sadly it was not to be
So dark and yet fair
She lit up my day
In ways no other could see

On my arms I wrote her a love song
Though long and moving, not deep
Though I know we're destined for each other
Maybe it'll happen next week

Why?

There is, in the back of my mind, an all encompassing all consuming thought that just repeats on and on, unaswered and unignorable. 
"Why?"

Whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy

Purpose

Growing up, there was always an omnipresent sense of purpose being required.  From my parents, there was the push to serve God, to love, serve and spread his name, and for a while that was the purpose I latched on to, but it was more than that.  Books were full of purpose, of quests and evils to be defeated, of reasons to go on.  The stories I liked best were stories of perseverance, and that perseverance always came with a "because."  The reason varied, but there was always a reason.

I don't have a reason anymore.  I'm not sure when I last had one.  I grasp for them, but there just aren't any.  I lost God, and I found that I had built nothing in my life to replace him.  I don't have a purpose.  There's just nothing there, no meaning, nothing.  Life just..is.  And when I weigh my life and realize that the bad times outweigh the good, I have no reason to push forward, and no reason to think things will get better.

I'm tired.  I'm just really, really tired.

Blessed assurance, where hath ye gone
Tell me how much longer this must go on
Heir to false promise, scorned here of god
Lacking a reason forward to trod

This is my story, this is my song
Darkness and despair 'round me
Since the beginning 'twas stringed along
Now lacking blindness Hope just seems wrong

Shut Up

Shut up you voices in my head
Shut up is all I've ever said
This bottle in my hand I see
Has within power to kill thee
And will purchase an hour more
Without your relentless roar
And damn the consequence I say
I never liked life anyway
Shut up you say you've heard before
But I'm not playing, this is war
And I don't care if I end up dead
You Will. Shut. Up., voices in my head.

Join me in the arms of madness
There is peace in her embrace
Strike from thee all hope of gladness
In the blight forget her face

Let the endless darkness beckon
Bring thy father's gifts to bear
There are many wrongs to reckon
In the blight taken unaware

I am shadow, I am sorrow
In the end my Father's son
Come now I to break the morrow
In the blight all is undone

Like a house after a fire
A shattered remnant still remains
In the absence of the pyre
No longer even knowing pain

Where once stood the ever proud
Now there is naught but ashe and dust
And now night, a fitting shroud
Descends upon the empty husk

The fire could not itself keep
In the wind, it blazed and it grew
When fuel was gone, it did sleep
How great a debt it did acrue

First

I don't remember my first book, I was young, and there wasn't exactly a great deal of depth to the stories provided to children of my young age. The point, after all, was the reading itself, just learning how to make sense from the scribbles on the paper. I do, however, remember with distinctness my first love.

I remember when I first laid eyes on it, nestled in a school library among books of entirely different natures.  To this day I'm not sure what it was doing there, far outside the reading level we were intended to spend our time within.  I can only assume there was some librarian who could not stand the thought of a collection without it, and I must confess that I agree.

The spine alone was distinctive.  Where the other books had titles written in block letters beneath the laminate, it proclaimed in a distinctly different script, above a gilded tree, that this book was not akin to the others.  Well, the length gave that away as well. But this was not a textbook, it had no quick moral, it was not something to be brushed aside with cheap laughs.  It was something new.  Something important.

I slid it from the shelf with reckless abandon.  The teacher with us, attempted to dissuade me, but it was too late, too late by far.  The golden star on the cover, the swirling reaches of the trees, the title had been written on the spine, but here the cover was content to let pictures play their part.  Looking back, they seem almost trite.  But it was there my judgment was made, and that judgment would not release me.

I stumbled through the pages.  The fears that it was beyond my ken were quite valid, but that only slowed me.  My parents I fear were likely driven half mad as I read, every word I did not know was dragged before them for analysis.  I was diving in waters I was not prepared for, barely able to swim, and I do fear that I drowned there, for I still have not got the taste out of my lungs.

And so it was that I made my first fateful encounter with fantasy, through the mind of J.R.R. Tolkien.  To these pages I would return, time and time again, as my vocabulary and understanding increased.  It became a familiar world, and yet it seemed that each time I dove into it there was something new, something unexpected, something I had missed.  There was magic in the fifth grade when I finally broke through all that sappy stuff with Aragorn and Arwen and found a chapter at the end with a resolution I had not expected (and which those who only saw the movies have also not yet known.)  It was an escape, it was release, it was a safe harbor.

Don't really have an ending so that's it! Stop reading go away uhhghhghghghgh.