So this wasn't the poem I was considering posting on my blog, but what the heck

Publish or perish, or something. Obviously less good than the other one, but I'd feel guilty about not posting something, and I want to work on my stories a bit more. (Granted, I did earlier today, too, but D&D and Cities: Skylines kind of devoured my whole day, fam.)

Anyways!

He came from the sea on a midsummer morn,
The nothing-faced boy with the salt-wrinkled hands.
He put on the clothes which he never had worn
And marched from the waves through the desolate sands.

Through vision obscured by a smooth wall of skin,
The nothing-faced boy saw the grit and the ash.
He felt the winds batter through cloth to within;
He watched as a light pierced the clouds like a gash.

Instead of kind shelter, the shade tore in twain;
The nothing-faced boy felt the wrath of the sky.
The light carved in him an epigraph of pain
And sung to the boy in a harsh lullaby.

It sung of the metals that shattered to shards;
Sung of the fanfare precluding the fire;
It sung of the plots and the thoughts and regards,
All of the whims of the grand rectifier.

Then the harsh lullaby asked him a question:
What was it he wished for, this nothing-faced boy?
What had he hoped to gain from his egression?
Did he seek catharsis, compassion or joy?

With questions unanswered, the lullaby ceased;
The silence returned, the light faded from view.
The nothing-faced boy from his doubts was released,
Assured of exactly how little he knew.

For all he had needed to know was made clear:
Aware of the truths that the world tried to hide,
He cast off the clothes of the dry, ashen sphere
And the nothing-faced boy turned back towards the tide.

What happened to him, then? Sometimes, I wonder
What the nothing-faced boy saw there in the sea;
But I did not chase him, dared not go under.
Perhaps that is how our fates are meant to be.

Comments

[Shannon Vanshoon]

Very interesting indeed... kind of reminds me of other works like A.E. Housman's To An Athlete Dying Young, actually. :-) The somewhat ambiguous nature of both the focal character and their fate especially.