Phoenix

Phoenix

Golden; They said the flames were golden

When I burned

In the moment of my deepest despair

What other’s saw was golden, fair

star light that burst into the sky,

Flames—flying high!

And beauty; they said I was wrapped in beauty

Before the flames,

A visual, spectacle to behold

Even though my soul was old,

And I was clothed in purple gowns,

my beauty renown…

Yet tribute to my beauty became only

A pile of ash.

No mortal eye could ever guess

What lay beneath the blacken mess,

What splendor of divine potential?

Now holding dead credentials.  

 

And despair, where once was beauty

Ashes fill the ground,

Where life once flourished glorious,

Now only death is found;

And ugliness, knows no limits

Where beauty now has died,

Washed up, burned out, lost causes;

Now hope has lost all stride.

 

Bleak; they had no words for when they left me

A pile of ash

In the moment of my deepest anguish

They all left; for no soul wants to languish

For what clearly fell to doom

There is no room—

And fear of being tainted, by ashes

 Made them run,

Leaving all that’s dirty to be sorted

For fear of being tainted, thwarted

Mercy, from digging through the rubble  

 No one, not one, would trouble.

But in the pile of my mess

I rose.

No mortal eye would want to say

That there was beauty there that day;

Weak, and small, refined by fire

Recalled to life upon my pyre.

 

And beauty grows out of despair

From ashes rise, beauty fair;

Filling life with hope now glorious,

Death to the phoenix, is not victorious!

No shame, or gilded beauty can be

So great, that death to self won’t free;

So let the façade burn away—

The phoenix rises, again today. 

By Zegingerqueen