The Word for Writers

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What’s Your Story?

The years have taken their toll
My visage is the calm resolve of acceptance
Exhausted of all emotions it is,
My leathery visage is lined with furrows
Life’s struggles have etched their markings
With the languid accuracy
Of ancient rivers-

These gentle lacerations of time
Lined in deep grooves
Each furrow a story untold
Of all that this life
Has dragged me through,
Each deep indentation, a battle fought
Won or lost, I live to tell the tale-

My heart aches and has been aching
For so long, I feel it no longer,
I am the solid bulwark against which the shallows
Runoff in their unceasing assault,
That gritty imposition of innocence
Doing what it does-

I am the irresolute beach head
Unto which the fury of this life’s oceans
Swell, wash and runoff,
I take each wave in turn
In resigned melancholy
My battered emotions have been weathered to gentle sturdiness-

A long time ago I stopped anticipating the next big one
They all wash against me and go from wither they come,
My toughness is not youthful bravado, rather,
It is the unintended consequences
Of surviving that which fell mightier souls than me
I just happened to dwell in the periphery,
In the eye of this turbulent storms of life-

That which you see on this weathered visage
Is impressive enough
Yet beneath the dried out gullies
Are the deeper waters of untamed pain
Those mighty surges of the wilder flows of undimmed outpourings
That the travail of life have unleashed deep in my core
The sustained pain of things that time cannot mellow-

My emotions have been deadened by lingering sorrow,
Long borne on backs that no longer feels its weight
I am immune, yet I weep the tears of humanity
Humanity that blooms like a flower in the field
And wilts under the very light that brought it forth
Its beauty but a momentarily flash in the sustained darkness
These deep waters, flowing-

So what’s your story?

The dissolving relevance of the passing years
The futility of the chase
The emptiness of satiation
Rage and fiery angst
Bile rising in bitter dissent
Against the self
My face, is a dry gully-

My face, lined with deep grooves,
Of life’s art in multi layered layerings
Of sadness that runs like a mighty river
Calm on the surface, roiling and churning beneath,
These lines, on my face, etched by hands of time
Deep and permanent-

Fissures of dried gullies
Where the rivers of the mind,
Dried up emotions, have ceased to flow
My face-

I have seen the face of sorrow
Walking down the dry and dusty market place
With calm resolve
To defy life and fight death
Till the very end
That was the end
On path from life that bitter is yet sustaining-

Salo women
Your elegance is bequeathed to a time before now
Your laboured voice is a grating irritation in this morgue
Where madness and death stroll hand in hand
With malignant benignity
Armless beauty
Look at your face-

You have aged in your youth
Your tears are like raindrops upon a merciless desert
Spare not your empty tear ducts
Your dry heaving
Complements the emotion-less desert you inhabit,
Gentleness of the innocent
Tried in the courts of the heartless-

I saw the narrow visage of desperation
Bearing with aplomb
A thin rod of metal edged sharpened finality
In calm and unhurried madness
Ripping out unborn children from the bellies of sorrow,
Pregnant sorrow dripping in slow congealed heaviness
On the dusty path in noon high sun-

My benumbed face frozen, in-between,
Emotional states
Forever indefinable
My eyes have paled in this face of placid acceptance
Its painful haze has been panned dead
Glazed glassy eyes forever weeping
Yet not a single drop in the gulches of leathered flesh-

My frozen lips can no longer smile,
The laughter ricochets in my head
Like the bouncing pieces of shrapnel
Shredding flesh
And bouncing off the dilapidated truck
With its miserable load of benumbed innocence
Seeking solace in a place awash with aggravation-

A lone cry pieces the noonday mirror stillness
A lone scintillating vibration of high-pitched desperation
Let loose at the pitch of the frenzy
That is so long sustained
It no longer causes the heart to miss a beat,
My face-

The soul of innocence barred in profanity,
There is no shame, not any longer,
Hide not your face from the horror
Let your eyes internalize this dread
For you are born to sorrow
Oh, my face-

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