Library of Empyreus

You smile with your eyes and that’s how I know
You haven't smiled in years
The curve of your mouth distracts from the absence
You’re far away from here
You live in four walls, you ride in your car
8 hours at a desk
You go from a box to another kind of box
To another kind of box

I’m fine
How are you?
What does it mean to be fine?
No slow to the grind
Time to join in the facade
But your soul is so ready
To trade in for a better life
On the other side

Longing for reprieve from a bad dream
Drift above the stench
The petty masquerade
No reason to emulate the kindness they fake
Pushing upstream, pass through the rank disease
Never with a moment of ease

Ignorant lot
Clumsy clatter fills their thoughts
Minds strain in the dark
All grey matter but no spark
Why waste your time?
Cogs so rusted caked with grime
The wheels will never turn
The people never learn
The quarantine’s begun
No other option but to run
A stone you have become
Your hatred is a cancer in the blood

Now the twine is cut
And swiftly falls the night
The lonely vagabond wanders towards the light
And here am I, the transcriber of your life

Now the book has been opened and I shall impart
And appraise the good of your heart

What has this tale to do now with me?
This recitation of misery that I read
Comfort needed, never heeded
Hideous culprit deformed in the mind
Toxin drips from his mouth to infect humankind
A shroud of shadows ‘round him

O, the villain
Whose is the face that I see on the page?
Depiction
Familiar beast grinning sly in his cage
You beckon
It is the smile in your eyes that betray
The monster has my eyes
I… the atrocity
I am the plague

No, Oh God
Let me look away
My hands are stained by the suffering they gave
What mercy is left for one so depraved?”

I cannot condemn an ignorant man
Nor can I admit him into Empyrean lands
Return whence you came
Reborn as a babe
Grow in size not in pride
Nor in hate but in grace