Heartstrings

Here we are. Week's end, rich from labor won hand-to-mouth,
and channeling Bukowski. Playing with the poem as the night turns into day,
reaching for wisdom, grasping stars captured in champagne,
grip numbed by chilled glass.
The wrist falls low, abandoned, heartlessly sluggish,
and still your kindling burns, yearning to be set alight.

A converted southpaw lends a hand.
Two folds by the jaw twitch, signaling
the changing of the guard. Two molds of hands,
set aside for the pianist, hold wine,
Rachmaninoff's bust staring listlessly,
while light lingers lazily just outside the bedroom door.

These are the nights of the old,
the nights of the restless,
the nights of the dreamer's dead reality,
where passion gives way to experience and withers
in the face of all the things that pull a heart's desires
like a puppet dancing, unaware of it's strings.

You never know what people might be thinking,
even you, who's known you all your life.
You never fully trust another, even though
you've let them in, given them warmth,
and let them in on every secret of your life.
The one you wish to marry better be the one you're with,

or else you've given up on passion, leaving a gaping hole
to fill where once lived your inner child who's
still screaming for attention, since they're put below the rest of life's
deficient, callous nonsense. Who first told you that you had to pay attention,
never do this, never do that, never live amongst the stars
that you once gazed upon without the help of glass?

To all those hungry, weary souls who must be fed with grains of dream,
awaken now. Live out the dream and let yourself
be filled to breaking with the innermost desires of your heart.
Be glad you have the opportunity to persevere
and never let yourself be scared of monsters hiding in your friends
who'd rather give you steam than rip you apart.

Continue on this path of Mabb, allow yourself to be consumed,
and somewhere, something, someone, will be awaiting you,
and say, "Come close; partake of me as I partake of you,
and let me fill the void you've yearned to close
since you were just a child. I am here for you.
Allow me to be free and I will show you life as you've never seen before."