The Last Troubadour

You’re the last of your tribe,
the one who will bring it to an end;
this broken ring of the failed and lonely,
where nothing is and nothing remains.

Are you happy now that the deed is done?
Did it bring you what you thought it would?
Have you pondered the repercussions,
the secret judgments of your songs?

What else could have been done in such a time?
Maybe it was always too late for those like us?
She’s gone for whom our songs were meant, these
fragments left in flames beyond regret or sorrow.

Do not look away from this poverty, seek it out;
know it for what you are and have always been;
this changing thing, hollow and without substance,
a mere vacancy without thought: an apperceiving thing.

If you were expecting things to be different, now,
you know the truth: the pure condition of love;
the error this darkness veiled in you:
failure’s tale, and complicity: nothing and no thing.

You stand there now alone, stubborn, indifferent;
like a stone encased in cruelty and pain; unyielding
and indifferent to the flames of desire scorching you around;
a last breath of ash and entropy, a winded particle of dust, thrown down.

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– Steven Craig Hickman ©2015 Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author is strictly prohibited.