The Amaranthine Poet

The Trouble with Purple-Washed Roses

April 2, 2009 on 2:36 pm | In Everything | 1 Comment

Sometimes I think that being a writer…not just writing, but being the writing, bleeding the writing, breathing the writing, depending on the writing, dreaming the writing…being a writer…is the most dangerous position to be in, as far as mentality goes. Because once you create satisfaction and healing and beauty in your own worlds, you turn your eyes back to reality and realize that it is nothing worth returning to. Then you turn back around to enter into your own created worlds, but you crash against a cold wall. Because that is what they do. You create them and they turn their backs on you and lock you out, behind cold walls and strongholds. And if you put your hand against the wall, you can feel the heat of unbridled pain, the dripping of consoled tears, the beating of excitement and gratification within, but you may not enter. If you do, you would not return. Afflicted by a deep feeling of malaise, you return to the unextraordinary reality, questioning whether or not you are too insignificant, or your life is too ephemeral, or your voice is too muted, or your ideas are too suppressed to be able to become and encourage something extraordinary to surface in this world. Why is everyone afraid to paint reality with the vibrant colors of dreams? We paint with dust and I am afraid of that. I am afraid.

Anyway, who knows what this has to do with my poem below…but my mind often wanders as we all are quite aware of…and since most people read my stuff on myspace now or skip over any piece of text that overwhelms them in length, it is possibly affirmed that no one will even read this.

People “hear” me better when I sing, but that is because it is a lot easier for them to listen than to read…takes less effort. Now, don’t be offended, because if you are reading this, you obviously don’t fall under that category . However, everything I have to say seems to be vaguely lost within a sea of voices whose ranges far exceed my own. Even when I sing, I highly doubt anyone is listening to my words and interpreting their meaning. If they were, they would know a lot more about me than they think they do. Some of my friends think they know me just because they know that I carry around a journal or sing or pick up random things from the ground or wash my hands all the time….but come on, ha! Those are things a stranger can easily observe. You don’t know me and I don’t know you, either. Now, I am not implying that I am someone particularly worth knowing, but just that we are pieces of artwork on display within little, soundproof, foggy glass boxes. IF you want to know me, just read what I write. Just listen when I sing. But I don’t know, maybe it’s a good thing when people don’t know you. I suppose I prefer to be the observer rather than being the observed.

Wow, well I’ve unintentionally gone off in two directions. Regarding them both, I hope I’m not coming off as being too cynical; there is just nothing here that stirs me up anymore, or at least, right now. Perhaps I ask for too much, but there is just nothing really here for me anymore.

The Trouble with Purple-Washed Roses

Like stifled oaths provoked by maniacal threats
They mean nothing
And I am sitting at the broken ledge
Writing of sandy skies and other porous metaphors
When a voice thick with gravel
And an aura swollen with
A deep cobalt haze and shallow breaths
Are what truly sifts through my shut eyelids
Like some kind of rain

My head has found rest on plush white roses
But my dreams have bled a stream of purple
Nectars, upon hearing his graveled voice.
Now my roses are like
Shadows
Reflecting the muffled groans behind
My dreams. The world within is shifting
Making whispered sounds that
Haunt like slurred incantations
As monsters mount a jagged woman

And my sleep is thick with wait
My spirit hides beneath the covers of night
Awaiting the gravel to unravel, pour
And spill out into the folds of reality.

And the world is deaf
But not you.
Fingers snap and
Thorns are snapped
And as you carry me back
I find the roses
In your pocket
And hold them until
My fingertips are stained

The trouble is
They’re stained.

Jenna Awad