I Know Things, I Shouldn’t, But Do
I know things that I shouldn’t, but do—
Dark syllables whispered at night,
Dreams that return with a terrible truth,
Draped in the garments of light.
They come uninvited, exact and severe,
Like bells that toll futures unkind,
And leave me awake with a trembling fear
Of the maps drawn deep in my mind.
I have dreamed—and the dream was fulfilled,
As a coffin fits flesh meant to rest;
The vision lay still till the moment it stirred
And rose like a ghost in my chest.
What cruel architecture shapes such a brain,
That builds what the daylight denies?
What hand inks the script of tomorrow in pain
Behind those unmerciful eyes?
The prophets of old, in Judea’s red dust,
And Joseph who dreamed for a king,
Would now wear the labels of tremor and trust—
A diagnosis stapled with string.
They’d trade burning bushes for sterile white halls,
Trade angels for pills neatly named,
And visions once sacred would echo off walls
As symptoms clinically framed.
Man fashions his gods from the marrow of fear,
From hunger, from wonder, from dread;
Each altar a mirror, each creed a veneer
Over questions too heavy to tread.
We invent every heaven, each hell we decree,
Then kneel to the things we have made,
As if naming the darkness could force it to be
Less sharp than the blade of its shade.
And some, in this madness of meaning and might,
Commit acts that fracture the soul—
Hands soaked in the blood of the innocent night,
Hearts emptied of mercy’s control.
I know this—oh yes, I know this too well,
Yet my reason recoils from the fact:
How can one mind build both heaven and hell
From the same human clay intact?
I circle this truth like a moth round a flame,
It scorches, yet still I return;
For knowledge that wounds bears a terrible cost,
It is knowledge one never unlearns.
So tell me, dear shadow, dear voice in the room,
If you can unravel this thread:
How knowing so much leaves us helpless and doomed
To have not understood it at all.
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