Paper Cuts

**NOTE: This is a piece written to be preformed, so there isn't an exact flow or form to it.

Paper Cuts

The night I awoke in sunlight and discovered the paper knives I lost my everything.
I forgot the sound of music,
The cycled symphonies of words,
Thundered from lips with the sheer force of stubborn conviction.
I forgot the rising surge of respect and pride,
Hearing powerful thoughts hurled shamelessly,
To hang in the spotlight for the world to be blinded by.
I forgot the elated agony of linking my soul,
To the barest most open veins of this earth and its people,
By slashing my heart apart,
And tearing out the sounds of my own existence.
I forgot that air was not for breathing,
But simply for expelling ideas,
Too terrifying to merely speak,
So I substituted power and passion for small paper cuts.
I sought to rediscover some fierce joy,
By placing myself at the mercy of my environment,
Because I had forgotten why I write.
When words are not enough to illuminate our furious thoughts,
We cut our shapes to match 8x10 paper,
And illustrate our features with words,
But still unsatisfied we rip our paper faces in half,
And scatter ourselves n the ground,
Planting our silent sounds as seeds of thought,
Then piecing ourselves back together from the horrified soliloquy to become truly whole. But when I lost sight of myself,
The words became empty like a womb,
Bearing memories of miscarriage and shadow,
And my ink blood bled out as my paper skin,
Was covered in lacerations from blades so thin,
Once you looked out you couldn’t see back in,
Paper cuts became my best friends,
And when I shone a light upon myself,
The tiny slashes took the shape of monsters,
Wreathed in light. I accepted this because my world couldn’t be real again,
And so I forgot the beauty of chanted words,
So similar to echoes of reverent prayer,
Wafting from quiet corners of stained glass church halls,
To mingle in cherry groves while the angels sleep.
I watched from the sidelines as I sat in the twilight,
And my shattered life became shattered verse,
My rhythm slowed as my heart bled dry.
My ink blood flowing from paper lacerations,
Entombed in my cold flesh by paper knives,
And I bled white and dry and,
My soul paled to a clarity that allowed you to do anything but see through,
And my world bled white and dry and flat and empty,
Because when the music of poetry loses its meaning,
It leaves no memories for solace,
You are alone in the dark hurtling feet first straight down,
And all you can do is look back up at the tiny pinprick of light,
That serves to refresh agony of how far you’ve fallen.
I see nothing,
Nothing until I close my eyes,
And let go of the regrets and agonies,
And fall free,
Seeing only endless possibility,
Ripped violently from the depths of my faded soul with desperate groping hands,
Burning with the fires of self expression,
That cut through the darkness in my mind,
So I will rise and with my final drop of mixed-ink blood,
Trembling precariously from my paper-slashed wounds,
I will paint you a mural for your ears.
Listen.