P E R P E T U A L Revolt
DRESSED FOR DEATH, ARMED WITH WORDS I always dress to greet death so that he will never catch me off guard. So many turn from his beauty, shocked by his dress, but I savor and entreat that sweet bitterness. Our lives are fleeting, this no one can escape, but death’s incentive is one God nor heaven could create Impermanence is that reminder that roses will die, and this life is but a short flicker in an eternal night So I shackle my fears and arm my thoughts with words, it is better to suffer failure than live enslaved with regret How many miserable moments alone have we endured; how many lives, serving silence, have been coldly squandered There is a blasphemy greater than that of disbelief in God, the blasphemy of betraying our human vitality for contrived idols Whether they are old haunting lovers who deprive us of new beginnings, or stoic educations that program us to distrust our desires But death reminds me never to withdraw, when granted a chance at beauty and love I seek to be enthralled To do otherwise would be to live dead, to find perfect beauty in a life not led. And for those who think me irrationally driven by emotion, I offer no excuse, just a kind rebuke: What good is living if we live suffocated by regret? If we spend so much time protecting ourselves with silence that our joys become mute? There is something to be said for the heretic’s hammer, that small dose of insanity which frees us from becoming living stone: That which is alive but calcified, caged by the corpses of dead ideals and soon, their bones Sometimes heresy is a willingness to believe that true living is taking chances, making leaps, ending silence with fearless, risky speech 22