Unending Ends

My floor is littered with the pages of things
left unsaid,
muffled voices that still call out
from empty closets
unceasingly wishing to be heard,
but I will not allow them--
though I should.

I walk amongst the fiery remains
of a world,
lost in its own reasoning.
Sparks swirl,
like angry hornets--
stinging nettles bite into my flesh
and the pain stays.

The prophets knew
what I long to say.
But as quickly as the tree falls,
Another grows to take its place.

Nothing kills as swiftly as a memory--
no blaze so great
that it can’t grow.
The heat radiates from
everything and nothing,
wherever the breath of life respires--
there it is.

Knowledge is a callous tyrant
and I am chained in his courts.
Withstanding the bite of a thousand lashes,
crisscrossing my back,
like the flight of
a solitary fly.

What good comes from language?
when you are surrounded by the deaf.
I would soar,
but my wings were clipped by doubt--
who told me I could fall.

There is no end to something
that had no beginning--
no foreseeable conclusion for a story,
that was never more than a rumor.
It ends pretty much the same,
as all in life--
an abrupt close,
just like this.