Turnabout

Dear 2017,
Your swansong stems forth from my heart like a baleful paean.
Forever enshrined like a bitter end in the tectonic plates of my mind
Your memories persist, helplessly stranded like a beached whale.
You wield an arcane, bizarre nostalgia, traced out across the months like an unsteady hand with a crayon.
I forgot how to count my blessings, instead I dwelt on my disasters, inevitably returning to them; like salmon, bound to return, always.
But in this rollicking roller-coaster, I learnt quite a bit.
It's been a cycle of ups and downs and mostly in-betweens.
---
I had a burnished sliver dream, remnant from ages hence.
Painting passionate password prayers to ever-hungry fate.
Spreading my hopes thin, like diffused incense
Whispering salvation dreams to heaven’s gate.

As the days move on, and the wheel of time spins
Like a midnight tango across a silent square
Playing into the tunes of long-buried sins
Where the vapid breeze blows through your hair

A scuffed sepia mane, coated with squalor
Singing the lackluster rhythm of the streets
Glassy eyes, and a deathly pallor
Praying for plagues in unsteady beats.

But slowly I climb, into a brand new day
The bright sun heralding my rise
My struggles began slowly to fall away
Reaching for the open azure skies.

And I begin to learn things afresh, anew
With the gold-flecked eyes of a revelation
A whimsical reverie in motley hue
Stemming forth towards aspiration.

And the cut-throat bleeding sunsets
Like a languid wave of vermillion red
Begin to conceal no more regrets
They contain hope instead.

Parading shrapnel memories used to congeal
Into bizarre, disfigured dreams
But that no longer describes how I feel
As my thoughts now shatter seams.

But even as I reached this high
I failed to look beneath
And this soul, which was ready to fly
Disappears into the yawning abyss’ teeth.

Stranded at the bottom, struggling to ascend
Smashed dreams leaking out dusty dollar-store lips
Locked in artificial nocturne, convinced that it’s the end
Trapped beneath a neon moon, in dim eclipse.

But as I play, entangling my way
Into kaleidoscopic strains of vacuous thorns
Escape from the bottom, for that I pray
As my heart is impaled on sorrow’s horns.

How then, do I escape this endless pit
Of a cycle of despair and sorrow
What if, from these thorns I can split
By looking up to tomorrow?

Then I taste the metallic tang of a coming storm
And I feel that I possess this power
To break out of this piteous form
And grow up to the sun like a flower!

As I climb the ladder to the sky
To where my soul once soared
I feel like I have the strength to fly
Difficulties again ignored.

As I climb toward that golden world
Slowly filling with ecstasy and bliss
I can feel my soul is with sunshine swirled
I’ve clawed my way out the abyss.

I’m coming up again.