The Scabbard Man

I smell him nearby. There's no peace, and no relent. Every time I look for quiet or calmness, I find only the choir singing my emotions into high notes that leave me with nothing but a blanket of sounds that I can't even pray through now and tomorrow. Every day I live more and more alone, it seems. No matter what I write, or how loud I make myself, I feel scarcely understood by your masses. I don't know why it bothers me; I've always known the fate I can't seem to escape: I won't find peace here with the rest of you. I'm too different to understand, and too much the same to stand out, except in my loud mediocrity. The only thing that seems left to determine is when my solitude finally gets around to granting the long peace I crave. I don't want to wake up tomorrow morning, but I think I probably will. For a few years, I've seen death as the only way I'll get peace, but Hell scares me, so I won't hasten my own demise on the chance I'll be there forever, burning like the rest and still close to their screams, and mine.



THE SCABBARD MAN

I thought I would be dead
While diving for the pearl
But if this is my hell
I know that I'd deserve it

The beaches are aflame
And reek of noxious fire
Like feces, gasoline
That's stirred and burned by nature

Adjusting to environs
So different from my island
Is not so very hard
I've dreamt this place before

A place away from love
A place with no redemption
With backwards glances sent
That promise me rejection

I push myself above my feet
And look at my surroundings
The beaches never end
But stink so blind can hate them

I take it quite for granted
That I am in my hell
It's all that I imagined:
Peerless, loveless, lost

A massive form appears
Across the west horizon
It runs in my direction
There is no place to hide

I see a scabbard belt
That's on a Scabbard man
Who lives on burning beaches
That burn from burning seas

With nothing left but hatred
I strike out at his visage
He eats my heart, and leaves
With no release for me

I lash now, discontented
At all my feeble efforts
To strike against his form
That looms on my horizon

Like love that's calling death
And death who calls him "love"
Inside my epidermis
I see his angered ichor

With everything abandoned
Save hope to end his life
He tells me I've distorted
All love, and lovers' time

And in his eyes I see me
I'm staring at myself
This ugly skin that binds me
And makes me somewhat whole

The sword that pierced his heart
Ignored a thousand years
For wanting and for waiting
To kill what I call "fears"