The Messiah Complex

Jul 2014

em

you love her.

you loved me
6 years
4 months and 13 days.
you loved me.

you even loved me those nights you
found yourself on top of
another girl touching her
bare, unscarred hips
and
wrapping your hands around her neck
instead of mine
smelling & inhaling the scents that
seeped from her
pores
finding
every crevice of her
22 year old body
every ******* crevice

but you said
sorry
and
you still loved me.

1 year
7 months
11 days
&
here i am
you asked to see me and
i said okay.
but now you love
her.

you undress me
examine me
"it's okay if i'm only looking"
"it's not cheating if i don't touch you"
and yet.
you touch me.

and i stand there
naked
in front of you as you
tell me
how wonderful she is

but i love you
i've loved you for 6 years
4 months and 13 ******* days
aaron
and
you still ******* love her

you love her enough to stop
yourself from ******* me
from kissing me
enough to put my dress back on my
body
with those
calloused hands and
a tear in your ******* eye

you love her enough
to hold back
to remember
to prevent those scars that
you allowed me
to create so generously.

you love her.
more than you
ever loved
me.

The Messiah Complex Jul 2014

Phantom

Please don't misunderstand me
I know this had to be done, things
were growing more rotten by the day
and sudden amputation was our only choice, but

I still feel you, like
fingers grazing skin, I feel you
like a heart that never left this chest
I still feel you, and

Though we had to cut away
the decayed flesh of what is
I am still trapped, thinking about
what was, and what could have been

My heart is still full of tomorrows
and I need you to know
I will never love again, not the way I loved you
never that way

Each path before, led me to you
but somewhere we took a detour
and I can't stop thinking; Is this the way it ends?
is this the way true love was meant to die?

Severed limb and bleeding heart?
I am only human, and there is a limit
to how much pain I can endure
and even though you're gone

*I can still feel you beating in my chest

A phantom limb is the sensation that an amputated or missing limb (even an *****) is still attached to the body and is moving appropriately with other body parts

The Messiah Complex Jul 2014

Reincarnation

This is more than a goodbye
more than a placeholder, or
a to be continued, this is a farewell
to everything both good and bad

This is all my fears, every last tear
placed on a platter, and I am forced to consume them
one by one, until I'm reminded
that nothing good lasts forever and everybody leaves

This is more than a death, more than a
resurrection, I know now the loneliness
Jesus felt in that tomb, but this emptiness I feel
is going to last a lot longer than 3 days

I will rise, slowly, dusting off
the remnants of a less-than heart
never to be the same again
too many tears have been shed, but

*I'll see you next lifetime

I'll always find you, and you me

Inspired by Erykah Badu's song "Next Lifetime"
a song she used to play for me at the beginning of this rollercoaster

The Messiah Complex Jul 2014

Canary

Life is a song
we must all endure
and most times, sing I do
forgetting the words, I improvise
from within this prison, I sing
off key and out of tune, bellowing blues
that only other caged souls
can understand

The Messiah Complex Jul 2014

Life, Lines, and Labels

Life* often speaks in rhythm & blues
whispering trumpets to bended ears, while reminding us
that smiles belong only in photographs; and tears
behind the curtain of an indifferent face

We walk fine lines, between tragedy
and genius, lines so rarely straight
we seek balance in mediocrity
and solitude in unfinished lifes

We become incomplete puzzles
forcing squares into circular places
by tearing away pieces of the whole
and conforming to the empty spaces

some things were never meant to be changed

We place people into boxes, neatly organizing them
by the labels* we give their cracks and flaws
seldom ever realizing that *broken has a beauty all it's own, and...

*some things were never meant be mended

The Messiah Complex Jul 2014

Zenith

You
and I are
more than just
serendipitous, we are
the culmination of two paths
two lovers who found each other
in a binary universe that swallows most
hearts whole and causes wayward souls to lose
sight of hope's shore

The Messiah Complex Jul 2014

Life, or Something Like It

I spoke to a man today
with kind eyes and contagious laughter
his passport identified him as Israeli, mine american
but for a moment, we were both just human

He told me he was a combat medic for the IDF
as we began our descent into a discussion of politics
he spoke of giving medical care to victims
of a suicide bombing, just weeks earlier

Life is fragile in places like his hometown of Tel Aviv
He showed me an app on his iPhone that
notifies him of places that were just bombed
or when to take shelter, in case of an incoming missile strike

How people must savor life in war zones like his
friends and family become temporary oases
bringing happiness and fulfillment for a moment
then gone the next

For once
there were no borders between us, or
cultural divides, just two men
discussing life, or something like it

— The End —