Poem: The life cycle of a lyric

It begins, as all things do, within

a darkened room permeated with untamed,

uncivilized feelings—being too full

and too sweet, unrelenting, unforgiving, begging

for release.

She will stir amid the troubled sheets,

and grant it entrance to herself, warm and once

too young, a whole new world

to be stripped of wide-eyed

innocence.

Time will pass to see it

born: crumpled and dark and raw. Rude

unbidden tears will spring from it, wailing, wild

as the night, as the heart

that had borne it.

The process of refining then begins,

the pain of taking away parts and pieces,

the wild words stifled, the crudeness checked

by judgement, the child reprimanded, sped on

to maturation.

The lyric finds itself in the dim, dusty light

of a teenaged boy’s bedroom, there to be

unburdened of its eloquence, released—its soul

to be perused. Wailing, wild, yielding, moaning,

begging.

Desiring—its undoing, the lyric fades

into vague memory: ink on paper weeping,

paper swept beneath the bed to tell its tale

to dust, static, one day to turn

to dust itself.

But maybe one day, you will recall the specter

of a smile and snatches of lovelorn words

knocking on chambers of a forgetful heart—

spark to memories, light to candles

on the lyric’s grave.