The Curious One

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.