Shallow

a black empty box stood in this room, yelling,
watching with eyes that saw all, that recorded all,
showed the world our most shameful sins,
how we held hands and whispered our love, before -
we spoke in murmurs under the television -
if we made ourselves heard we might have drained away,
the tv telling us we were unimportant, these days.

in our eyes the mirrors of our childhoods,
made up from watching reruns and soaps and dramas
that our lives had failed to become -
we wanted to tell each other everything about ourselves,
but we found we already knew it all, it was all the same.

our hearts swollen with the ideals of love,
aching, hoping, romance novels shoved inside a few
ounces of thudding, fluttering beats,
wishes for toe-curling passions starting to fade,
we could not open our mouths to speak, these days.

when the television burned out we stared at the abyss,
imprints of flashing, firing bulbs burning our retina:
you could have moved, i could have left, but my throat
ached from the tears at how quiet, how sad this had become;
our hearts were too drenched in the fats of empty lives.

maybe we’ve died, but it doesn’t matter anyways,
since we don’t even exist, these days.

when once a strange lord ruled the skies
there once fell a demon to his eyes
and blinded him then forever on
so that he could never appreciate the sun.

he cried and wailed and hated life
and bemoaned his future of having no wife
but mislead he was and cried for naught
for a wife of his he could have bought.

for wives abound in lands away
though wives they are not called by day
but children sold to men and boys
as slaves and wives and other toys.

though never nice and always cruel
this is the way of a lord’s harsh rule
and so the practice never dies
though not for the ignorance of the lord of the skies.