Who are you, anyway?

Who are you, anyway?

I've seen you from far away,

Quite a few times before I got to know you.

I always thought you were silly, or quite useless.

A waste of time chatting with you, probably. 

Flowers, leaves, no fruit.

Who are you, anyway?

I was the new boy in class, and was quite shy at first,

Trying desperately to make friends.

But I never went to the pains of talking to you,

Never even bothered making eye contact.

What was the point anyway.

I didn't want to hear your voice,

Or hear you speak. I've heard it all,

I know what sort of stuff you'd come up with,

I thought. 

Who are you, anyway?

I never really liked you.

And then one day you caught me unawares.

You said hi. You spoke to me with different words,

In a different tone, and it was as if I'd never heard you speak. 

Your voice was breaking, and breathtaking,

You seemed to be talking about many things at once.

I learnt that it was an insult to ask you

About the weather, when you spoke about things deeper than silence.

You spoke about such a wide variety of things, intertwined them.

You did the police in different voices.

For the first time,

I realised you were beautiful.

Who are you, anyway?

I began to hang out with you,

Speak more often. Talked about deserted lands and myths.

About paranoid love-songs. Talked about ashes and staircases. 

About time, beginnings, ends, stillness, dancing.

I fell in love with that broken voice

Speaking of unbreakable truths.

I too, began to speak in your language and tone,

First amateurly, then profusely, 

Whether what I said made sense or not.

Then I felt the meaning of the word graphomania within myself.

I asked you your name and you replied coyly

In the tone of the Sirens, "Poetry".

Who are you, anyway?

What have you done to me.

I never was interested in you

Till I heard that broken voice,

And now you have grown upon me like a disease,

And I keep on writing, and I then feel

That terrible ennui and exhaustion of poetry,

That frightening doubt of whether what verse

I have written is verse at all, and if there is any merit in it at all.

And yet you consume my thoughts, in my walking, my working, my eating.

What have you done to me.

And now I feel within myself

That artsickness, that homesickness

For the beauty of heaven my true homeland.

Who are you, anyway?

Hang on. You're not God. You're poetry.

You're like a muse. A siren at times.

Enticing me into the rocks. Making me feel empty.

It's because I deified you, so to speak,

Obsessed over you. All things in moderation,

In their place, and God in everything.

I sit here before God, my everything.

I'll use poetry now and then,

Not all the time, to describe the beauty

Of life, reality, and of God.

And I calm down now, and I see the sun rise,

The gentle waves of the ocean wash up my feet,

The lush green trees at the end of the seashore.

Quiet, breathtaking beauty. Forever and ever. In God.

I dream of wearing shorts forever,

Relaxing, letting go of control, trusting completely.

Tranquility. Serenity. Peace. A normal life,

Eyes on God, and occasionally chatting with poetry and art.

I could do this forever.