Redacted

To all my words living in volumes redacted,

relics of moments and feelings transacted,

preserved in pages not to be opened,

poems long erased from truths outside spoken,

value and meaning, your service complete,

forever alone on those pen-stained sheets.

The solace I found when once I made you,

now only an echo of all we’ve been through.

To alter the altar where I once kneeled,

to mend all the layers once so expertly peeled.

Leave it behind, not to rust or to drown,

but merely retire six feet safe underground.

Secrets and chasms from deep in my soul,

now to be buried in that unfindable hole.

Such beauty exists in that forgotten prose,

but only curses there lie, like a thorn to a rose.

Hide under black, because I can’t bear the white,

proof you once were--messy scrawls of my fight.

Clandestine thoughts and shameful regrets,

to move toward renewal, to give it my best.

Where once I dwelled in perpetual potential,

now my demons I release into the celestial.

......................................................................

Farewell and goodbye my friends, redacted,

inspiration turned outward and refracted.