DOWNWARD SPIRAL

Time and time again,
Love has been picked, poked, cut open, stitched up, torn open again,
Examined and reexamined.
It has been weighed against fame, careers, ambitions, money.
Alas!
It has been found to weigh so much less.
Hence, it's failure.

So like most women before me,
I analyzed love subjectively,
I weighed it against my goals, my career......
Hell! I weighed it against everything that put food on my table,
Clothes on my back, boots on my feet,
Confidence on my hip, money in my wallet, and peace on my mind.
Imagine my comfort at discovering it's negligible value!
Love was suddenly meaningless, useless,
Unworthy of my egotistical heart, too silly to feed my clever mind.

And so,
Love fell from the top of the list, to the bottom of the well,
Down below in the still darkness,
Where it joined retirement, old age and death,
Tragedies I would deal with, hopefully -
NEVER.

I TOOK FLIGHT

I was crawling through hell's pit,
The darkest corner where nothingness and evil sit,
The dullest hole where hopelessness feeds on young souls.
In the foulest, scariest, loneliest, and bitterest of places you can imagine,
There I lay my head.

I was seeing nothing but doom.
Feeling nothing but my pain.
Knowing nothing but the mortal promise..
Hearing nothing until IT was played..
And so I began to see again,
to feel all emotions my human senses could manage,
To know all that I had buried in my subconscious mind,
For suddenly, I took flight.

The tune was mellow and bright,
Every stroke bore depth and a wealth of magic.
The voice was like that of a heavenly Angel: perfect, soft, and powerful.
I was slowly dragged by each beat from the darkest, foulest, scariest, loneliest, and bitterest of places you can imagine.
I was hopeless but it mattered not for I had a song.
I was bitter, but I had a song.
I was lonely, but the song became my companion.
I was fearful, but with the song I was braver.
I was mortal, but the song made me alive.
Oh how I loved that song! The song that saved me.

By and by,
I grew a pair of wings,
And made my ascent with a vigor I had never known.
Behold,
I was the woman from hell's pit,
Raised by a song,
Towards heaven's light.
Only imagine my delight!
Only imagine what I had escaped!
Only imagine what I constantly escape,
By playing a song or THE song whenever darkness looms.
For this world is dark sometimes.
But with a song, it is brighter.