To You

A Martyr

If I should live to see the day,

When you’d greet me with a smile to match the Sun’s,

And dispel my lonesome day-to-day worries,

To feel as free as butterflies, so merry and gay.

Just to have your eyelashes brush my cheek,

When you lean in to whisper comforting lies,

So that I’d smile a smile to match the Sun’s,

For that, anytime I’ll trade my hands and eyes.

It is not the shine of your hair or the curve of your lips,

That captures and imprisons my every breath,

But the scent and melody of your love,

So strong in all that you say, all that you do.

Smothering it might be, this ‘love’ of yours,

And dead I’d rather be, than not be yours,

For I’ve waited a thousand eternities,

To bask in your presence and die a lover’s death.

Shush and hush you’ll plead to me,

How sweet, how sickening; just like honey,

How I’ll love you oh, how I’ll hate you,

For my perennial enslavement to your beauty.

Yes, yes, and yes! I do love you,

Need I bleed my very eyes and cry for you?

Need I keel over or kneel forever?

Believe me, I love only you.

__________________________________________________

Note:

Because I was watching 'Leaves of Grass' which is a movie that premiered at a film festival last year and is not yet but supposed to be released this year. And YES, it stars Edward Norton. And, well, Edward Norton. He plays identical twins in it heh.

What got me writing this is cuz there's this girl in the movie, she recited a portion of Walt Whitman's - To You (here) while she gutted a humongous cat fish that she caught with her bare hands. Fantastic no?

Anyway, she read this bit here:

You have not known what you are,

you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life,

Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time,

What you have done returns already in mockeries.

The mockeries are not you,

Underneath them and within them I see you lurk,

Beautiful isn't it? Took my breath away. 'To You' is a love poem and it actually got me wishing I'm in love or at least, have known love (of that sort I mean) for a sec. Just so I could write something a fraction of a fraction of a fraction as pretty as it is.

And I wrote this. It started out okay I guess. I mean, I tried to imagine what it'd be like, to be foolish and stupid and in love (I'm pretty sure I got the foolish and stupid part accurate...) but then, I got angry halfway and there. It turned out accusing and bitter instead of passionate and lovely. Even titled it 'A Martyr' as a sort of petty vengeance for my being incapable of at least imagine how it'd be like to be in love.

I suppose, I just have this idea of how grand 'Love' should be and decided that I shan't by any means succeed in 'simulating' it without having experience it first. Hah. Oh, I might cling to romanticism and all but I'm still, a realist. I don't hang onto such things.

I'm hopeless. I even tried my best not to make it rhyme but rhyme it did. I'm such a rhymster. *sigh* Ah, well.