Taru Marcellus

Jan 2017

Alexandra Provan

My child,

As you watch your worlds get torn apart
With a malevolence you can’t comprehend,
Please do not throw yourself into the crossfire,
This is a war you cannot mend.

Their anger is too deep-rooted,
Their hurt is much too strong,
They will insist on going down fighting,
And refuse to see where they are wrong.

Find shelter from this constant storm,
Please close your eyes and ears.
They won’t listen to your pleading,
They choose not to see your tears.

Your screams won’t penetrate their spiteful resolve,
Your little voice will go unheard,
You have no choice but to be strong now;
A responsibility so undeserved.

My child, you cannot help them
As they stand firm on this battle site.
You must know this will be one of many,
There is too much wrong to put right.

If they could see how their bellowing makes you recoil,
See you cowering on your knees,
They might take heed of the damage they’re wreaking,
Reconsider this incessant, vindictive reprise.

But this road is far from ending,
So don’t exhaust your resilience here,
You must protect yourself from the barrage,
For they have not the strength to shield your fears.

It will be another long and tiresome night
As you are again dragged through this mess,
Processing all of their vicious accusations
For all that they refuse to confess.

So as you watch the two people you revere the most
Spit venom at volumes you can’t stand,
I beg you not to let it make you hateful -
This is not what they had planned.

I know how you long to fix it,
Desperate to appease their pain,
But my child, too much has already been broken,
Just please know you are not to blame.

I wish I could offer an escape route,
Tell you everything will be OK,
But there is no choice except to ride out this bitterness,
Await the dawn of a new day.

And on that day you’ll find a way to forgive them,
For destroying everything you knew as home,
For their selfishness stealing all innocence
And turning safe places into war-zones.

Taru Marcellus Jan 2017

Heart of Darkness

I think I'm obsessed with the dark
some nights I find myself buried under covers
no longer hiding from monsters
but from myself
I lost fear of the things beneath the bed
until I tucked my suicide notes there
now I dream of death cloaked in misunderstanding
I nightmare of long days and a longer life
daily-
I awake to the reality that demons aren't confined to the shadows
and no matter how long I withhold
the light will eventually expose me
for
the
monster
I
am

Taru Marcellus Nov 2015

WoodWick

you can find reprieve in the burning of a candle
the flicker of wick
pure animation of life

come and dance on these ponds with me
submerge yourself in scents unknown

have you ever bathed in lavender
come out dripping royalty

this, is the secret to passion:
dance in the wind
dance til the end
and when darkness comes
light another candle

Nov 2015

heather leather

"eight"

when you are eight you will start to become sick of waking
up early to go to church but your mother will drag you
with her anyway and she will always spend too much time on
her makeup so you will both end up being late and the
sweet sickly scent of the perfume she sprays on makes
you sneeze and Sundays will very quickly become
the worst days of the week, this will be when you start
to be ridiculed by all the other girls for having short hair
and this will be when your father starts coming home late
enough for your mother to be suspicious and for the
sound of Frank Sinatra's greatest hits to stop being loud
enough to mask her cries as he hits her for being too **** curious.
Sundays will be when you learn that the devil is an infinite
amount of liars starting with your mother when she says
she is fine and ending with your father when he says
he loves you. now when you are bored you will start to
hide in your closet and pretend to be someone else.
your closet now becomes Narnia, it becomes the rabbit hole Alice falls
into, it becomes Neverland and it becomes the safe haven
your mother's jazz records no longer offer; when you are eight you
will feel the weight of the world stretched out onto your all too
little shoulders, compressed into your mind and a monster in it's
own right that is scarier than the one under your bed because you
cannot find a way to escape it, it lives and breathes inside of you and
it forms a pit in the core of your stomach whenever you see
your mother flinch as your father kisses her softly and later you will
find out that this feeling is called fury but for now it remains
****** into the walls of your mind like a bookshelf at a library
and it surges rapidly like a tsunami and leaves nothing but debris in
it's wake, when you are eight you will begin to dig holes in your
skin with your fingernails to release the pain and the frustration
you feel that causes wreckage inside of you and later on you will
learn to describe this as being cataclysmic but for now you are eight
and you wear your hair in pigtails even though it's much too
short and catch fireflies with mickey mouse in your mind as you
hear frank sinatra's greatest hits become increasingly louder

(h.l.)

thoughts?

#eight

Taru Marcellus Jun 2015

A Call to Live

If you take a microscope and zoom in, you will find millions of tiny bacteria, reproducing through fission and struggling to survive. If you take a telescope and zoom out you would see the universe ever-expanding. Between those two, bacteria and the universe, there is us- humans. And we reproduce and struggle and grow. Sometimes in life you will feel small like bacteria; sometimes you will feel as big as the universe but no matter where you go or what you do make sure you are always growing. It doesn't matter where you were planted; ALWAYS GROW!