This Is War

Rhythm in motion. Perfectly aligned.
Your heart beats next to his,
but when we’re together, it’s confined.
The sunlight gives you its blessing, but darkness rules my mind,
I swear your chains will bear my mark
all in good time.
You scream his given title
when his passion ignites within you,
when the flame burns your soul
but I’ll be over when he’s through so
say my name, say my name
when nobody’s around you,
love is a gamble and I’ve got a pocket ace.
It may look like I’m losing but I wear a poker face
and I’ve explored you a thousand times more than he ever will
because he thinks you’re so damned tamed
but I know better still.
Say my name, say my name.
We’re acting kind of shady,
but lust burns bright in the dark
where his love can never reach and he might have the prize
but I’ve got you constantly at the jackpot
and I’m your hidden consolation,
your rhythm in motion, second in line.
He may hold your hand in the sunlight,
but for an hour or so a night,
your heart is mine.

Your heart is mine.

Sins of my father
still attempt to murder me in my sleep.
The abuse of the past,
I feel it creeping in the shadows,
hear it creaking with the tattered windows,
see it taking over my own fucking reflection
and I stare at it nightly,
just waiting for the date and time
of when this monster would end me.
Divine intervention can’t save us now,
I’m too far in the circles of hell,
disguised as a world sold to others as heaven.
We no longer ascend,
we’re on a steady descent
into madness and insanity.

It started with an ending, a paragraph and a half on crumpled paper
that got lost in the dance of the winds and snatched by gravity’s wrath.
I had set forth a chain of events that would lead to our demise,
how a perfect romance was in front of my every eyes and I let Poseidon
drown our future in the deluge, while I was cast away by the undertow.
I refuse to embrace the shore, despite the sanctuary that came with land,
I’ll lose myself in the open sea if it meant finding you once again.

It begins with the element.
A birth of a child, the thirst of a plant,
a drop in the ocean, a breath of life,
and I swam in the abyss, with the wraiths of extinct coelacanths,
I journeyed into the caves conjured by sand and coral,
just to find the start of the novel
that had been published without a proper ending.
Dimly lit caverns and abandoned shipwrecks,
conversed with the ghosts of the Titanic,
who sang of their untimely deaths and final heartbreaks,
but no trace of the one I loved anywhere underwater.

I submerged and I witnessed the rain fall,
falling alongside the tears of heaven,
falling in love with someone I’ve lost to fate’s fury.
How I long to rewrite our romance,
but the waves have carried you away.
Your cerulean smile, your aquamarine soul,
and all I’m left with is an unsatisfying ending
while you celebrate the genesis of your own tale
and I drown in this tainted ocean,
littered with ghosts of my own creation.

Doctor, what’s the diagnosis of this madness that runs through my veins?
They label me as abnormal, but inside we all bleed red.
Crimson flesh, red rivers, fucked up dreams; we’re all believers.
All carbon copies, yet there are those regarded as superior.
The machine is identical, yet ours draws fire from endless segregation.
What I know as truth and liberation is sentenced as a disease;
if that’s the prognosis then I’ll suffer for this blessing,
rip it out of my functioning body and display it for all eyes to see.

This viral damnation, it divides the fucking nation
and people will turn to their trusted religion to seek their deity’s vision.
They’ll enslave us in chains of laws and regulations but I refuse
to bend my knees to a society obsessed with abuse.
When darkness veils the morning sun, I’ll only dream of love,
I’ll dream of warmth and freedom.
I year for a crown to rule my rightful kingdom.

Rebels and vigilantes will launch an attack rooted in the obscene,
the air tainted by the scent of spilt blood and smokescreen.
They’ll spill their own ink to purge the souls they deem unclean;
pray to the heavens for a nonexistent vaccine.
I’ll fight until my last breath to become an unstoppable machine.

See, I’ll never understand the need for judgment built to demean,
just for the reason that I seek a king and not a fucking queen?
I don’t need your diagnosis for this “madness” running through our veins.
We’re not sick, abnormal, nor insane.

Look inside your soul, and you’ll see that we’re all the same.
Just lost souls looking for a sense of justification.
It’s to quit the descent and aim for elevation.
We don’t need hate, we need more love
to restore the life draining from this dying nation.

The most pathetic thing about humans is that we believe that the person whom we love is a choice that we can make. That’s far from the truth.

Truth is, I want to break you. I want to hate you with every ounce of my existence. It’s like a drug, the way I’m attracted to a substance that harms my health. I’m drawn to you, but it only hurts me even more. It’s like an illusion of everything I’ve ever wanted, but when I reach out to grab it it’s inaccessible. It’s not real. It’s a mere fantasy. I just wish I could hate you, so I won’t feel this emptiness anymore. I didn’t choose to love you. I didn’t choose to feel hurt every instance your name is spoken, or whenever I see you in his arms. I didn’t ask for this. My heart dealt the cards, and I’m forced to play along.

If I had my way, I would never love you. I would hate you with every ounce of my soul. But love doesn’t work like that, does it?

Dammit I just miss talking to you, that’s all…

It’s like going 80 on the freeway, defying the law
and playing old Jimmy Eat World songs on full blast
with the windows open,
because I’m reckless under your spell and I love the fire within,
how I’m unrestrained by rules and defined only by you
is the most amazing way to exist.
You dare me to drive faster and I’ll dare you to stay
despite the circumstances threatening this bond.
Middle finger in the air, you don’t give a fuck
and lack any care
but you get me more than any song could
so I’ll step on the gas and accelerate some more.
Run the red lights,
we don’t stop for anyone, and I can’t slow down
when I’m in your zone,
I’ll race you to the finish line, I’ll let this dance go on.
What is melancholy? What is despair?
With you by my side, I just don’t care.
Hurricanes and tornadoes, nuclear radiation,
savage beasts and warring nations
could never rewrite this feeling.
You’re everything and more, so sing along with me
to the songs that define us.
Recklessly in love with your whole existence;
our love is unmatched, indestructible by any resistance.

Fuck, I hate myself for thinking that drowning myself in alcohol is synonymous to forgetting about my feelings for you. But it’s the only thing that works. For an hour or so, you’re actually not on my mind.

One thing wrong that’s on my mind… How the fuck can I miss you when you were never mine? Why are in my thoughts every fucking time? How can I leave this yearning behind? Is it a crime? Is it a crime that you’re the subject of my rhymes? I swear, you’re a product of the divine. A savior from this hell, this fragile life of mine. When I feel like shit, you make me feel like I’m on cloud nine. Just a single line, I feel almost perfectly fine. I’m in love with you, that’s the bottom line. My only wish is our fates to be perfectly align.

But there’s a flaw in the design. You never were, and never will be… mine.

How matches must strike the box to conjure flames, I long for friction between us. Silenced volcanoes in my body, they long for eruption so summon the exposition of a saga that ends in fiery completion. Passion is red, bitter red. Passion is stolen, untamed red. Uncaptured, unearned. Unfitting to call mine. You belong in his arms, but I’d rather see you in mine. I’d rather be burned alive than spend another lonely night void of your touch. 

Heaven is a day when I go up in flames, with you by my side, screaming out my name. Heaven is an hour, late in the night, when silence takes its reign, and inside you is where I’ll reside. Heaven is a place, heaven is this taste for desire. Still this yearning, be my playful fire.

Ivory ashes on concrete floors; life emerges from what once perished. Metaphors from words, stemming to reality; figurative strength translating to actuality. You were the fire that never faded, you were the incineration of fears, of what had me jaded. Perhaps it’s true, that I’ll always love you. It was the brutal truth, the cold sweat, the rhythmic beating of my heart that kept me alive. Only you can kill me. Only you can breathe me anew. Only you have the power to be my savior or damn me into eternal torment.
It was the flames of April, it was the memories that remained, that became the knife. The knife became the final notes of a beautiful song. The song became my story and the story echoed throughout my veins, it signaled the conclusion to something that never was. Ash fell from the skies after the fall of a man, but something grew from the ashes.
I’m still smiling. I’m still feeling your words etched into the walls of my heart. I still love you. But I’m alive. From the aftermath of the flames that threatened to consume me, emerges a legend that has yet to tell its tale.
Thee words unsaid, vows unfulfilled. Lips yet to be quenched. How will our story end?

Feeling the Earth shift as the city breathed her last,
I was drowned in the deluge of Neptune’s wrath.
In cerulean fury, I gasped for air but heard nothing more
than the song of the sirens.
Lost in the aftermath of underwater destruction,
dying to the serene grace of static down below,
the abyss never looked so beautiful.
Someday, I want to awaken from this dream
and swim with the resurrected coelacanths,
make love to the women that fell from grace
along with the lost city of Atlantis.
Someday, I’ll kiss the sunlight that faded from my view
and I’ll escape from this darkness,
this frigid grave in the depths of this sea.

Think of me, my love back on land,
if ever the waves sing to you and you’re suddenly not alone.
Hold my hand when the whitewash enfolds your soul.
Cherish me as the downpour renews your faith,
because though I may be gone,
though these underwater ruins are where I shall remain,
I promise to you
that Atlantis will surely rise again.