The Melody is Gone

It's been a long time since my thoughts have been coherent
And somewhere along the way I stopped trying to make them so
I've tried to embrace these innate peculiarities which have taken hold

I'm stopped trying to write to a rhythm
I've stopped trying to write at all
And still the music is in me
Flowing and ebbing within me
And it won't be silenced; the words will not leave me
They're a part of me

I've tried thinking of strange ideas, strange concepts and give thoughts to strange visions and planes
Where the moon is of many and sings as it spirals and the tides are in chorus as the new song is sung
Oh sweet sound is about me as I stand in those waves
Flowing and ebbing about me
As the music swirls inside me

But I'm not there and the change is made
The grim and oppressed is upon me
The darkness prevails in the night
With the discouragement of life humming round me
The torment of experience taunting me
As the younger years of me are fleeing
And the elders cannot care to halt it
And I cannot see for the hatred
That is slowly burning within me

But this too fades with a moment
And the anger that has grown is abated
But the wondering plagues my mind
And the thinking is deep and continuous
Immense in its dimension and its lack of constraint
I can't help but doubt it is me thinking it
For surely I can know nothing of these things
The philosophies of life, and its nature
Are but more words that were written
Poetry of a different kind
And I cannot help but wonder if my own thoughts could take such a stance
For is my thinking not different enough to be noticed
And absurd enough to be laughed at and discussed
In the shady corners of the classroom
With pens leaking ink from their postponed pause

My thoughts could not strive in this semi-strife
With the onslaught of critique dragging them under
As I sit here and try not to ponder
What it is that keeps dragging them out,
For I am not thinking of thinking or writing,
And yet writing about writing I sit

And I wonder perhaps do my fingers draw at an untapped consciousness
Which is resting within myself
And like me it is often condescending
Sarcastic and sardonic and morose
Pedantic yet rash, impulsive and brash
So that I cannot know it by any name but my own

I hear love stories played in the air
And I hear the poor fools who fell too far
And it blends and it breaks
With the way the world shakes
Their hearts and their lives and their bone

And am I not one of them?
For I sit at this desk at all hours
All days of the wearying years
And write of the troubles that I bear
The wonders that forsake me
The hard work that makes me
The morals that wound me
The song that will tune me
Again and again and again
And still I sing out of chord
For the song is not meant to be sung
In human voice
Or in human minds
For do we not hear only the echo
And the great epic of its melody is gone