The Philosopher Part 2

He draws the curtain open His weary legs haul him over gravity's threshold He sways, the water leaving through the drain with the rest of his will, his strength He steps past his minds mistress And crumples onto the floor Gracefully, like an empty shirt folding down upon itself His mind lies, his knees hurt The cold tiles send shivers across his body He begs for the heat, the sapping warmth The penetrating cold reinvigorates its assault No mercy for the wicked, the weak Again he realizes how inadequate words are The cold to him is like the slap of a parent, the sting left behind is the memory of failure The warmth to him is like the lull of a siren, the dulled senses are the reward of failure The writer draws the curtains on her pity stained eyes She looks away, her job is to write, but here she has to endure his pain She reaches out a tentative hand, blind to his turmoil Speaks her words, they wash over him like a comforting breeze His wet body shivers, the breeze envelopes him like the hug of a thorn bush She looks at his casing, lumped against the tiles, Flesh seeking pores within the ceramic to ooze into He drapes his eyelids over his archaic eyes His fragmented eyes reflect the light inwards His gluttonous eyelids hoarding his secrets away from the world But he can still see, he cannot tell, but he can see The raging torrents within this house of flesh The denizens of his crumbling fortress seek the solitude of a final desperate act The smoke of the furnace suffocating them, always They seek a full lung, unclouded air, enough to satisfy every pore of his tired body He sighs, an attempt to seduce the turmoil, The chaos abides, his eyelids drag their mass upwards And so his fragmented eyes look away, The furnace of his mind hires mindless drones, He drapes a towel over his cold folds, His lady smoothes the seams of her skirt, Closes her laptop, And his reality locks the rusting iron gates within shut, He dries himself, Walks over to his room, the cold touching him in unwelcome places He puts on his layers of fabrics over the folds of his flesh, Beneath them the iron gates help the world pretend, Pretend that the words are wolves with fangs, that the turmoil is held at bay But the presence of the iron gates, the warm clothes, the seductive words does not lie The philosopher shoulders his burden, and prays the next shower will be more merciful The philosopher shoulders his burden, and pretends that his shriveled form can brace the weight © Samir Georges 2009