Poem: The Cursed Phoenix

Poem: The Cursed Phoenix

By Kavya Chandra
QuailBellMagazine.com

Clear waters erupt simultaneously with the
wind, as if they weren't made to compliment
each other's rhetorical gasps of whichever
element would fit them best, and a man  
about as aged as the Earth itself is seated by the shore
of this claimed, unnamed land; his feet end where another
place altogether starts- the place where the
consuming creatures of the Earth lie, breathe, become;
he sits vacantly as his arms beg to shiver in the pale moonlight;
his ears twitch as the crashing and thrashing of
persuasive waves erode his mind constantly
asking him to not think, not believe, not contemplate
if he would, if he could slip into the grasp of
morbid mortality, and he calms them with utmost
patience, like you calm yourself over running
away from the only life that comforts
you- you aren't going to let it run around like
a deer caught in the eyes of her predator,
but the thought of it seems exciting, worthwhile, even
but then you must let it go, you've survived, the
predator wasn't hungry enough; the man's arms
are shaking now and the air around him seems
perplexed, consternated, unconvinced,
he has been here enough times, he has become
a man tiresome enough for his age enough times, now
they mustn't worry, he tells them, he is tired, indeed,
but he is also remarkably misunderstood to
be assumed to run wild around like the species
who think they're saving themselves for a greater day;
he swings the fronts of his orangish feet
back and forth, back and forth, back and forth,
to match the incoming and receding waves; it is time
to leave now, it is time to put on his dark "materials,"
as they call it; he slowly makes his aura slander
his body straight, he opens his arms to a full 180 degrees,
his featureless, senseless face protrudes a peacock
like beak, turns into a blinding white on all visible
surfaces, like the rest of his blinding body,
it doesn't hurt- only after every 1400 years or so perhaps,
has it felt a sense of some degenerate feeling,
it has eyes, now, a sapphire blue to match the
morning skies; the dawn must break as soon as it flies,
its rainbow legs ache as they pull muscles
for the journey ahead, it blinks and the air
follows it, then the first sun ray, then the ringing silence
of the crashing waves; long survived, long lost,
long forgotten- it's a myth; the phoenix knows
though all men must die, none quite believably have to live.

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