Tarnished Wisdom

"I bleed, sir, but not killed."

A/N: Inspired by the '95 version, which starred Kenneth Branagh and Laurence Fishburne, and was incredibly slashy. At least I thought so. It's not meant to rhyme, some lines just ended up doing so. I have no control over my poetry. It's sad, really.

He spoke

            of one who loved not wisely,

            one who loved too well.

            He spoke not of

            the serpent who, with crooked

            Knowledge, lured two innocents from

            their paradise and drove them

            barefoot through the twisted and deceitful ways of hell.

            And now they return to that

            abandoned garden and I,

            the snake,

            persist.

            I bleed.

            I have spilt more

            blood in life than tears.

            And regret--

            that was just a trinket,

            a mirror

            shattered with a careless blow.

            I speak

            of one who loved wisely,

            (meaning not at all).

            Too well, 'tis true;

            familiar names and faces,

            voices, places

            all clutch with memory

            and yearning for the past

            is perchance

            the love of friends long gone...

            I'll be honest,

            though that sword hath

            rusted in its scabbard,

            conquered by mere will.

            Or lack.

            One did I love overwell,

            one fierce and noble as the morning sun

            but black as night in outward radiance.

            Being wise, I dared not

            speak of it,

            instead dallied with song and drink and pike,

            satisfied with crumbs from friendship's feast.

            What crumbs I found to quench my appetite

            grew stale and poisonous to the taste

            and just so grew my fiery love to hate.

            Torn by prideful weak revolt,

            I bleed.

            Now like a maiden tormented by a single

            aching lapse

            in a tapestry,

            I slit the whole apart for

            one thread,

            destruction, construction

            knotted and melded into one.

            My Wisdom.

            He spoke

            again, of me,

            ripe lips rejecting

            measured, tasteless words:

            Ensnared my body and soul..

            O, if he knew, had known.

            The only yearning that

            lurked ever in my own--

            that very power,

            but earned, not taken.

            I was wise then, though,

            and (I admit now)

            loathe to walk

            lest I should fall.

            Now, at the end of the

            rank trail I have wrought,

            I can see the blind guide

            Wisdom is.

            And wish his arms 'round me,

            not her, and only wonder

            as, finally,

            I weep.