Clockwork Lives

Narrative: Metamorphosis

Half-dimmed coffee shop lights.

Residents stir dusty rumours

Into mugs full of soap, 

And pinned on the walls

Are grey moths, unfluttering;

Their wings frayed without use.

My mind is just as still as them

Bearing figures with no life,

No colour to call theirs.

They could not lend me a dagger

To tear through the seams

Of this papery chrysalis.

 

The motes of dust hold captive

A poet; a monster inside,

And perhaps these walls 

Are better white-washed,

Than blood-stained.

 

Until the scent of ink conquers

My barren thoughts and shuttered eyes,

And the butterflies, black and red,

Shatter their glass casings,

These shells will keep on stirring, stirring,

As the beast inside is stirring.

But the mirage is breaking;

My mind and soul are waking.

Eyes flutter open.

Wings flutter open.

 

The paper lies like temptation.

With this ink I can plot the constellations

Of dreams and nightmares alike. 

The words are the butterflies,

And they fly of their own accord. 

The pen only sets them free.

My mirror is a prison.

I shatter it, and what escapes?

Only the words I never wished to set loose.

The walls aren't white-washed

But blood-stained.

And the words aren't butterflies

But monsters.

A pandora's box has been opened;

Ink stains my hands like blood.

My own metamorphosis has begun.