Prince of Darkness

Standing on the grounds of education

An ashen-faced youth appeared

Who congealed rooms with his rumination

Unaware of the culmination

That his torment will spread far and wide

Until he finds a way to turn the tide

If I knew how long it would take

Would I have continued?

The years of heartbreak compounded

With a shiver of promise evanescent

Infantile joys that led elsewhere

And yet, I never surrender

When will it be enough?

Can atonement be weighed in guts?

Extasy has a broken charm

So now I tell myself a different yarn

One constructed from hope’s thin air

A resolve born from my woe’s river

My life is a funeral

With remains from a raging pyre

I am a black-furred feline

Fawning over a perished shrine

With more than nine lives

Purring to the end of times

I am a stranger and a friend

Homeless world citizen

Let me borrow your hurt

And give laughter in return

Intrinsically different, withered

The weak, the preyed-upon, the other

I will forever be your faithful brother

So I hold out my hand to the oppressed

May you all be free of torment

For you are human too

More than they would ever know

They often forget so

As they are running the show

The real face appears now

But you may not want to see mine

For its truth is blinding, naked, with piercing eyes

My gaze resemblant to bleeding clouds

Where a deaf and blind crow flies

And ghouls growl lethal goodbyes

Torrents of hate have eaten their way into my brain

There’s no tough guy here

Just a human precipice

My hate as deep as my love

Trickling inside the blackest of blood

With many different ways to fall

Can I love you all?

The fear is subsiding

I can see a glade glowing

Or is it wasted on you?

Can I dedicate myself to clearing the world of sorrow?

I always recognize buffoonery

He’s a friend that I know intimately

But I would much prefer tomfoolery

So we can all get along famously

As it may not be so serious

My hardship can be hilarious

Even when life is decrepit

Maybe it’s fine to be happy

I look into your interior

There is no gaze superior

Than the look of decisive feeling

Where we witness each other’s seeing

Nothing can break me

I’ve been touched by death

Turning mind and body into weapons

To rectify all the gruesome patterns

That talk of shame, guilt, and anger

And as my feet leave the ground

My ascent becomes magnified

As feathers of my heels sprout

Leaving the abyss behind

And when you ask what have I learned

My recollection leaves me hanging

The vastness of my infant being 

Dancing, dancing away, relenting

The twin silence is a distant cry

All I know today, at this hour, at this time

Is that suddenly, I no longer want to die.

A resurrection

A volcano of affliction

Morphing hurt into tenderness

What I have in me is a furnace

Home is everywhere and anywhere

We live inside our purpose there

And as we stare into each other’s glare

We breathe the same gentle air.

Prince of Darkness – A poem written by Ágoston Hajnal