This is a poem I had to write for English that reflects on the ancient character Oedipus Rex. If you aren't familiar with Oedipus Rex , it is an Ancient Greek Play about a man who was sent away as a baby because his parents received word about a prophecy that said Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother. To prevent this his parents sent him away. In the next town he ended up in, a different family raised him as his own. Eventually Oedipus found out about the prophecy and left his adoptive family thinking they were his real family to prevent the prophecy from ever coming true. When he leaves he ends up killing a man on his journey and marrying a woman and having children. The man is his real father and the woman is his mother. When the truth is revealed to him Oedipus stabs his eyes and his wife/mother hangs herself. Basically, his fate couldn't have been avoided.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There once was a time I thirsted for the helplessness of being incapable of finding my seat without being guided by the chair railing of a wall
All in exchange for the inability to make sense of my life.
The life I lived with the ability to see colors was more often than not blanketed in my inability to recognize what was happening in my world around me.
When presented with the opportunity to end my sight I took it in hopes of receiving an understanding of anything and everything.
And so I took the brooches from the breast of the woman who gave me life, gave my children life, and rested the pins in the palm of my hands facing the firmaments and I had never seen anything so sharp and so clear and I yearned for their punishment.
I dug the pins deep into my eyes again and again and again...
And with each confrontation I could feel my hands becoming sodden with blood.
Though I could not see, I knew the blood was red, a red so deep and poisoned with my sins.
And I bathed in my sins as if each one were spelled out for me onto a blank page.
I could suddenly see everything.
I could see in a light so bright it hurt my eyes and I became desperate for the days where my life was clouded.
I cried out for the knowing was insufferable.
To cradle my blissful ignorance in my arms once more...
To stroke the cheek of my wife and not my mother...
To hold my daughters and not my sisters...
