IN THE SERVICE OF HEAVEN

salvation for the damned and the unholy

SEA-SWALLOWED RELICS

My entire life I've lived in a corked bottle of stained glass, 

Breathing the dusty smell of the make-shift sea, 

Scaling the mast of a ship made of fabricated dreams and illusion, 

Whistling along a deck where plastic scrubbing boys cracked their nails on the sickeningly polished wood.

I guess it was my very own fairy tale - where pirates conquered the bottomless oceans and sought treasures of eternity -

That someone locked up inside an ancient relic and threw into the roaring waters of the seven seas. 

And I've been living inside of it ever since - corked up on the sandy bottom, 

Watching the real ocean flow past in its ceaseless desire to demolish and ravage 

As I hold onto the ropes of my tissue-paper sails, hand out-stretched, 

But never quite reaching the dream cascading through my scarred fingers.

I tried walking the planks an ugly dozen of dreadful times, each full of their very own cruel finality (now, it's going to be over now),

But each pathetic attempt ended in silicone water flooding the cavities that the absence of hope carved out of me, 

Strangling like the ropes that will never loop their menacing lengths around sea ports - they, too, are prisoners of the stained glass relic. 

I tried holding a knife rusted in its isolation up to my paper-thin throat, whose every new breath was a waste of perfectly fine, stuffed air, 

But each time the dark loomed close enough to touch, I retreated like the stars at the galloping approach of day. 

The ocean makes sailors, not soldiers, you see. 

The princess in a sky-high tower with locks golden like the sun might be able to save herself (I think you already know that),

Yet a rotten pirate with whiskey stuck somewhere deep down her throat is a legend devoid of a happily-ever-after. 

It's a tale mothers don't tell their children, because no one ever cared to find out what happened after the sea swallowed the little ship made of toothpicks, 

No one but the restless tides ever saw where I laid the foundation for a new kind of graveyard of drowned talent and aspirations buried under the salt of the wind. 

They say villains don't get happy endings, 

But what happens to those who never even had a beginning? 

[this one is a little weird (pls point out any spelling mistakes i feel like i missed something) | heavily inspired by Nietzsche, tnx philosophy class]