you asked me what you could do and i told you nothing.
you asked again and i said that if you asked your questions in a song, i’d listen to the song; but when you ask me questions as questions, i couldn’t care less.
“but it’s painful,” you said.
and i said that art was pain and pain was art, and that neither meant much without the other; that if you didn’t transform your pain into art, you were just busy getting your ass kicked by life for no good reason; that art without pain was like art without beauty, and joy without the rain…
and then i realized that i had mixed two threads and let too many souls touch and now…
∆∆∆
it lies there in a bed of thorns—the things wrong in the game; nestled and protected by visions of correctness, the things that have served you well.
but you’ve never been a worthy master—it’s not what you’ve wanted, what you have built yourself for. you’ve built yourself for abdication and control at once, building castles made of stories where you let your hair down from the Tower and no one comes.
and i say that you are so good what you do, but maybe you need to change what you do.
∆∆∆
if the goal is what you say it is, things must change. but if the goal is what is, then you don’t understand the game and never have.
“i’m confused.”
that means we’re getting closer. beneath the jails of veils—inside the bars of hijabs and abayas and niqābs and the other projections of fear—are men too scared of their own lust, who live in fear of what they would do for a Klondike whore; so they ask no questions and recite the Verse of Light as if they aren’t truly the ones wearing masks while donned in full prison regalia. jailers turned the jailed, they claim no ownership over their power to wreak havoc in your heart and mind and life, and rarely think of breath and pauses and tones and timbres and sighs and inflection and humor and sarcasm and vulnerability; but they chant suras to a God that does not matter and ask:
…how can i be talking to myself when you’re listening?
