Disintegration of the Muse

Teresa Sphinx

A brilliant nest of riddles indeed
Your name remains true
When I spotted you perched
On my apartment door
I was unsure what to think
Sphinx yes
That is what you are

Your timing was swell
As my bloated belly
As I had just prayed to
The god of moths
Who told me to follow the moon

Between you and I
That's his answer to everything
But then he gave a real answer
You

A shiny abstraction
Of a request deferred
A symbol to be devoured
By tomorrow's spider

You waited patiently for hours
Until I arrived
And even the sickly outside light
Deterred you not
You had a message to deliver
Even if it meant
Delaying your inevitable
Self immolation
On some humble campground

I touched your wing
And still you stood your ground
Determined to advise
That you were less a thing of nature
And more the world's strangest familiar

Rather than invite you in
I uttered out a weak thank you
Returned to my business
Your message squandered
Not on deaf ears, but something worse
A deaf mind
Locked in a kind of rigid, complacent hell

You gave the message I asked for
and in return I ignored you
You gave your life to tell me something
I already knew
But wouldn't change
Like old pharaoh,
I deny miracles
As they erupt around me
Like loud angry crickets
More obvious than
The sun itself

The day after I blamed the god of moths
For the spider web erasing it all
Stuffed my lunch down my face
Re-repeating my status quo
I mocked my faux miracle just so

Listen to the exact same station from the radio
Drove the same route
Lied to myself
Said why today was different as I
Drank the same coffee
From the very same cup
Prayed to the god of unlearning

Stared at the wall half dazed
Half yearning
He probably won't bother with another messenger
Which is half a shame
Half of me will accept his words like a fanatic
While the other half begs me to be grounded
But a grounded moth won't fly
Neither will I

It's a thing to accept
Mr spider, devourer of miracles
Thank you for your lesson
The druids bang their heads on the oaks as I say this

Understand,
Even if I acted on your message
Fruit would not bloom
If I tried to reopen that long dead door
To the old ways
We would find the spirits calling to us
But so what?
What do we do?
Flee everything?
There's nowhere left to flee!
We flee the death and iron to find more
Death, more iron,
More wires, Not a piece of moss to be found
Just chained blobs of fat choking on their own essence

The moon was the eye
Of a beast
In the sky
He stared me down
no guilt nor humility
It held the essence of joy
In cruelty

To dance with the old ways
Is to dance the Totentanz
Appreciate your song, I do
But I swallowed my pride long ago
I've accepted these walls as reality
Trees and air as fantasy
Cabin fever necessity
Liberation unnecessary
Broken spirits the par
Homogenization of our cares
The putting on of airs
Gonna need that if you're gonna go far
So the dance of death is all that's left
An uncomfortable silence
Retreat to your signs