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I ride a dark horse

through the canyons

of our past;

Far away from 

the desert island of our

disaffected here and now.

I catch a glimpse of you

on a high bluff,

looking down at me.

You always did try to

occupy the high ground,

moral or otherwise.

But these dashing rides

always lead me back

here, where I find you

standing in front of me.

I watch as you sharpen

your anger against me.

Copyright © Robert Haigh 2011

You poor little porcupine.

It startled me that you jumped in front of a moving car.

I wish I could be there for you and help in any way I can.

But your quills pricked my heart when I gave you a hug.

I cannot pull them out or I would die.

So I had to tolerate this pain and let it suck the life out of me little by little

While I think back to when our affection for each other mended every obstacle we faced.

The future was bright for us.

You couldn’t stand by to let me sink

So you taught me to swim.

I wanted to return the favor badly.

But I didn’t know how I could, sadly.

The possibilities were endless when we spoke of our dreams.

You could picture yourself coming to my rescue and growing old with me.

You couldn’t wait to hear my voice as if your favorite show was about to air on TV.

You made every effort to show that you loved me

Even if I have nothing to give you in return except my own.

A year passed and the storm clouds were brewing.

The weather grew colder and attitudes turned sour.

I was working hard and I felt out of breath.

You were studying hard and you turned inflammable.

“Where was I when you needed me most?” you asked “calmly” one day.

“I’ve been fighting my own battles all this time.” I tell you. “Life hasn’t been kind to me lately.”

Please, please bear with me. I’m tired and I’m scared. I’m going to be left to my own devices.”

“You need to make more time for me.” You scream. “Anyone would have abandoned you ages ago”

“If you’ve been gone for as long as you did. Is several hours with me too much to ask?”

“Answer me, you ignorant, pathetic excuse of a child!!! Grow up!!!”

I couldn’t with you leeching off of my aura.

You made it seem like the world hates me now.

So I packed up my things, spread my wings, and flew off into the rain.

It doesn’t matter how badly you are suffering yourself

If the prospect that I need to take care of myself too slips your mind.

I never asked you to help me.

You did so at your own volition.

If you didn’t want to in the first place,

You could’ve answered, “No thank you.”

We could’ve gone on with our lives either way.

But here you are.

You called me immature.

You called me a teen in an adult’s body.

You said I never bothered to do my share.

But my dear porcupine, have you taken a look at yourself?

Or better yet, look in a mirror?

You don’t see the newfound greed in your heart, but I do.

The scholars in my inner circles do.

Whose leg are you trying to pull?

My loved ones know exactly what you said.

They know how selfish you’ve been acting and what I could’ve done.

If you think no one can love me the way you did, you could not be more wrong.

I can admit when I am anyway.

You went to town on me like I didn’t know how to count.

And my only response to your passionate rave was goodbye.

In the blink of an eye, you disappeared from my mind. Your quills in my heart decomposed.

It was like you were just another customer that treats cashiers like their punching bags.

I wish you the best of luck with your own hardships.

And I hope your own wounds heal entirely.

But I am done with you.

I am done letting your vitriol take up space.

I am done listening to you disguise your resentment as facts.

I am done hating myself for what our love has come to.

My love for you was just practice for the next person.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Demeter was wise to tell me to stop getting involved.

Because I discovered that what you don’t know

Was how amazing it felt to give you up and do her work

Without a care in the world. After all, you don’t know me.

Are you ready for it?

I shouldn’t have to ask you that question after all that you have done.

It would’ve been rude of me not to give you a heads-up like this.

Your reign of terror is steps closer to its endgame.

If I do not draw my sword and face the ghosts of my past, checkmate is guaranteed.

I did something bad long ago, but can you blame me?

I’m just a human being that made a mistake because I was not in the right mind.

Anguish and love do not mix because both made my life worse before.

If you respect that my situation is delicate, why do you keep poking the hornet nest?

If you crack it open and the wasps sting you so much their poison burns,

don’t be surprised if I say, “Look what you made me do.”

Your empathy is lacking so why should I care if you are put to rest the next day?

Princes don’t negotiate with paupers like me.

So it goes because fame and violence are always placed above justice and peace.

Isn’t it gorgeous to be the one in control? To run a country or a sect without a care in the world?

Doesn’t it feel amazing when your subjects obey you unconditionally as if you are an almighty god?

These questions reveal to me that aristocrats and celebrities use their authority

for insolence and seduction. No wonder we can’t have nice things.

You are not entitled to my throne even though a liar was the king of my heart before.

What was “yes” today could be “no” tomorrow so I keep fewer promises.

I’ve heard enough empty platitudes from your devotees to realize that an oath is not to be made lightly.

Anything else you want to preach about before I take the getaway car to escape additional agony?

Go ahead and dress your possessive wiles by telling me you love me

And shower me with material goods to let my guard down against my better judgment.

But when you try to use your tenderness as leverage, it is all the more reason for me to leave.

The longer I stay here, the more certain it is that my life is in danger.

My hands are tied keeping the darkness around me at bay for as long as I can.

Fortune is never on my side when I dance, but my sword will always be my partner.

Call it what you want, but the battlefield is my ballroom.

If dancing alone is the only way I can retain my individuality, so be it.

Happy Raʼs as-Sanah al-Hijrīyah, Vlad Dracula.

I’ll see you in Hell.

She gives in again

he cuts the rope shorter

I am faerie fire

I want to rage myself into a forest burn

and there are still things I can’t put into words

She gives in again

he cuts the rope shorter

I am faerie fire

I want to rage myself into a forest burn

and there are still things I can’t put into words

Scream, scream, screaming:

Help those drowning 

all around

and they look to their coffers,

and the piles fill into the coffins--

The tide is coming in and the flood

is just getting worse:

there's a rage building in the dead,

and we'll speak for them. 

Wretched bodies flung into a funeral pyre,

and the silence is deafening upon the pile,

and we see our love burned to ashes,

and we see their hands deep in pockets.

Cold hard cash for the winners and 

death sentences for everyone else. 

There's a cold rage building in the dead

and we'll speak for them. 

The march of the dead is coming and 

pitchforks are on our side this time.

Too big to fail too big to fall to big to take on

too big for their own good too big so

let's build ourselves and let them know

we're too big to ignore.

There's a cold rage building in the dead and

it just keeps growing and

we'll speak for them. 

If we're face down, six feet under, it doesn't matter

if their cash piles grow and grow

in the face of God they pray, bow, and pretend

it's fine as long as they say sorry

and it won't be. 

A cold rage is building in the dead,

am ember burning

threatening to blow it apart

and it just keeps growing

and

we'll speak for the dead. 

When the man of the house threatens to put a leash on you,

The best step now is to see yourself out to force him to rue.

The saddest eyes in a world of gray

Full of hurt, and the weakest strength

Windows to a tortured brain

Courting madness to look sane

I see the darkness around your face

That you try to hide away

You've lost the will to live again

Subject to recurring pain

The wrinkles flow around your features

Like roiled and cracked imprints of creatures

Growing old while in your prime

Extenuate the charm of time

The mouth is small and bares it's teeth

Silent when it ought to speak

Chewing when it ought to stay

Cursing the good days away

Stepping back

Now I see

It's simply a mirror

Reflecting me...

I’ve been swimming in the deep end lately.

My head is spinning in circles.

My heart had never been so hollow on the inside.

I need to catch my breath before I do anything else stupid.

My work of art is an escape from uniformity.

I felt safe with you for the time being.

At the end of the week, you cuddled me

When the sergeant had an off day at work and took it out on me.

I let you in like I did when I meet new people.

You were happy for me when I told you I finally found love.

I wanted nothing more than a friend’s reassurance that everything will be okay.

But you in particular were a land mine waiting to explode.

It’s dangerous territory where you’re from as a queer.

It’s dangerous territory where I lurk on the web.

It’s dangerous territory to build a world without receiving adequate training.

It’s dangerous territory to make friends with volatile people like you.

I can barely read script in Delphi without misinterpreting some if not most of its passages.

My art isn’t like what you’d expect to see in other do-it-yourself or high-profile projects.

The way I write, the way I archive, and the way I distribute information is my strongest suit.

There is no way I can fulfill my goal in life alone without the help of a team that knows its stuff.

You didn’t have to sugarcoat your advice to fix my problems

But you didn’t have to pull more than my teeth either.

You spoke to me as if I had to know every damn trick in the book.

You pointed out where I went wrong as if I didn’t already understand it.

I would have welcomed your advice if you watched your language.

I would have been more considerate if we joined forces as planned.

But being friendly with you in light of this is just out of question.

You can say that I’m high all you want, but it goes to show that you’re smaller than you think.

It’s dangerous territory where you’re from as a queer.

It’s dangerous territory where I lurk on the web.

It’s dangerous territory to build a world without receiving adequate training.

It’s dangerous territory to make friends with volatile people like you.

A vagabond told me this morning that I don’t learn much from success

And boy, I sure did learn a lot about your character more than what it takes to be top dog.

I might also let it slip that you exploded in my face because your little rant was all over the place.

In that case, riddle me this, who among the two of us really needs room for improvement?

Happily ever after doesn’t exist.

Not when people like you also exist.

I bought myself a new suit of armor so you don’t drive another knife in my back.

I told the vendor to hold the stallion because human legs were never for aesthetic purposes.

I wanted to walk the face of the Earth with you using my own.

We would’ve walked more than a thousand miles together to chase the sun and avoid the night.

And I never needed to worry about my tired legs.

They built up a tolerance from walking in the coastal sand and helping me keep up with dirty dishes.

I told you about my demons and how quickly I am to care when I’m shown an act of kindness.

Mother always lectured me that no matter how small they may be, they are never in vain.

But there is such a thing as being too kind. There is such a thing as temptation.

The best of us cave in once, twice, or maybe more than that when we write in our diaries.

You were like such a book to me and I trusted you, but never did I expect that you’d defile my soul

By persuading me to partake in activities that I would never in my right mind do.

I should have recalled the fable of a girl who trusted a poltergeist that haunted a similar diary.

Had I not flee the moment I saw your true character, I would have joined her in death.

Looking back, I understand that diaries are the keys to starting fires and turning innocents into fugitives.

You can try with all your might to pry my mouth open to get me to spill any more beans

But my lips are staying sealed because I know who you really are and I finally learned my lesson.

You never exposed me. You only leaked a chapter that was part of a book you never read.

So why bother showing it to you knowing that my real friends and family will be endangered as well?

I know that a deluded man gambled away so much ammo to the vipers that he became a trainwreck.

I swear on my recurring nightmares that any answers to your questions will be used against me.

Truth and justice is a concept invented by people and after all, people do make mistakes.

God bless the right to remain silent.

Because even the condemned understand that its value supersedes a vault of gold

That the draconian blackjack dealers steal from the poor that desire to play with them.

Where was Robin Hood when I needed him most?

Flash forward to a single year and I’m now twenty-five with an art degree in hand.

I’ve spent all that time studying my ass off and avoiding the vipers that plague my past.

I was with my true friends who never give a shit about your deceit when I realized I never needed you.

Preparing for financial exams under the tutelage of a bright mathematician was like you never existed.

So the next time you see me, I won’t grovel on the pavement begging you to take me back.

Instead, I’ll look the other way and French kiss my new admirer in front of you.

Just to let you know that I changed for the better and you missed out on the life we could’ve had.

I am fortunate to understand that your absence last summer turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

I dare you to call me an idiot again!

I dare you to call me a chicken!

I dare you to say that I’m going down

While you hide behind the blackjack dealers that love you for show!

There’s always someone out there willing to give you a taste of your own medicine anyway.

How did it feel when even Discordia didn’t want anything to do with you?

Was it salty and sour like your attitude and your deceit?

Cavities caused by the consumption of these candies are a pain for dentists to fill.

And just like that, you disappeared from the face of the Earth again. Hopefully, for good this time.

You can erase your identity from the world, but you cannot erase the marks your venom left behind.

You may still be on my mind from time to time, but I don’t see you in a virtuous light anymore.

You are nothing but a fable.