I'm looking for the right kind of metaphor.
One that'll force every idea or thought or love song

Into a line of lyrical poetry.
Like the one about the endless sea, rising

And the watchful moon, crying.
Or the line when the glorious sun collapses on itself

(As all self-proclaimed glorious things do)
And the phrase about a scarlet sky who never stops raining.

But good metaphors, like most men, are already taken
(Yet less easily seduced to plagiarism.)

Have you ever pondered the life of an overused cliche?
Hear the cries of their writers when you discard their words as meaningless.

Ignore the simple truth that every idea or thought or love song
Is but mere fluctuation of commonplace cliches.

Oh, the sweet seduction of plagiarism.
After all, Shakespeare was a man.

He thieves penned letters from underneath the writer's soul while she sleeps.
The stolen words taste sweet in his mouth like chocolate

Yet with an underlying bitterness,
(Perhaps, that is a metaphor for my personality)

Unseen, he evaporates, shrouded in the darkness of ink stains.
Wisps of eraser dust are left in his place, the curtains billowing.

The writer leaves the window open for her lover, but Inspiration is flighty,
But when he does take her, she is always left disappointed.

Her stories have no end, her poems have no beginning,
And despite how much she cries, her words hold no meaning

And despite how much she tries,
Her phrases will not carry beyond the sound her soon forgotten name,

Her lines will fade between worn pages of an unpublished book,
As her hands writhe under the duress of fragmented ideas,

They will cripple and wither away into the dust which shaped her destiny.
She is finished.

Her tears rain like broken glass, slicing skin,
Scrapping away the color in her eyes.

Bleeding out the life in her veins.
Her existence reduced to a dismal destiny,

Condemned to drift amongst the living as an apparition,
Yet never close enough to reach blissful, bittersweet death.

He tells her to get over it.
He forces breath into her lungs in the form of

Syrupy,

Sickeningly,

Sweet medicine.

Down her throat, it ravages her body like poison.
And like the pretty flower she once was,

She wilts.
As the rotted petal falls, she is buried beneath cursed ground.

Watching the earth worms tunnel through the remnants of her soul,
He shakes his head and whispers,

“It was only a matter of time.”
She told me that Time is irrelevant in the seventh circle of Hell

The clocks sound broken chimes
The alarms are always mocking, shrieking out of tune.

You measure your days by counting haunted heart beats
Each imagined tick or tock is a ghost of someone you used to love.

And soon, you begin to lose track.
Years become seconds and minutes become eternities

Yesterdays are tomorrows and tomorrow doesn't exist.
To me, that sounds much like Heaven.

I grow tired of waiting
Life is comprised of tedious patience.

Forever waiting for things to die
As all things do in Time.

He engraved my stifling path to destiny,
In his hands, he holds what I am and will be,

Etched through the faded lines of his blistered palms.
In prayer, he crushes me inside interlaced fingers.

Still, I pray that one day I may become—
Something, everything, anything but the nothing I fear I may be.

I send off my pretty prayer on the wings of Time's folded hands,
And wait to see it fall from the scarlet sky,

And drown into the endless sea,
Always rising.

It is a tragic fate to go through life as a misunderstood poem.
Though your purpose is distinct and significant in the eyes of your author,

When you are laid bare and vulnerable to the derisive squint
Of someone who can't see your beauty or ascertain your meaning

Beyond dictionary definition.
Their jealous glances marring the remnants of your battered soul,

Forever tortured by the icy glare of someone who
Simply does not care for poetry.

We are a humanity who doesn't seem to care much about anyone,
We are those who either function under the guise of apathy,

Or those who hide under the falsity of empathy,
To conceal the envy we harbor in the pit of our stomach.

Growing like gnarled vines, it yields thorns, yet brings no roses.
And as we mourn and pray over the dead,

We envy their freedom,
Silently screaming belligerent curses to our oppressors.

Our precious humanity.
Anger rises deep from the belly of sorrow

And climbs out our throats like bile—
Distasteful to the civilized man,

Yet harmonious to the howling of wolves.
And as the watchful moon looks on,

We are the ones who are crying.