James B. Christian

I once touched the moon! After a lifetime of chasing her, rising to greet her, and falling at her retreat.
I finally touched the moon! After a lifetime of longing for her, I had her, I this forlorn cad.
I once touched the moon… And after a lifetime, I'll still miss her, still dream of her.
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I stood at my pulpit shouting the veracities I had come to believe, like a mad man upon his soap box. I plead for understanding from my disciples, convinced that my words would somehow change already set minds. A fallen king trying to regain my crown, my efforts were desperate, frantic, like a child trying to reclaim a privilege lost. A zoanthropic fear washed over me as I saw that my words only seemed to push my people further from me. Their eyes only caught mine from corners, seemingly afraid to meet my gaze and only checking to be sure I would not advance on them. I watched them pulling their children closer as if to protect them from an obvious danger as they passed.
Alas, I was the mad man upon his soap box, my sovereignty just a busy corner in a city too busy to notice. Built on a love that I could only have imagined in a broken mind, a kingdom built on ruble long decayed and unable to support even the vegetation that grew on it, let alone these grand delusions.
Alas, I had become the fiend they rightly feared. Alone and donning a tin crown, I had become the beast they warned their children about.
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… It was her eyes, like blue burning car wrecks,
Tragedies you couldn't look away from.
A girl whose face is a blur but whose name lingers on my tongue like bitter medicine…
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I screamed for what seemed like ages but was never heard.
I frantically tried to salvage the pieces from the ground.
But they were already trampled and crushed.
She watched for what seemed like only moments and then drew near.
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Simply stated, a knife once twisted and set amid bone, cannot be removed without exasperating the wound.
Neither stitch nor suture will mend the pain scored in flesh and mind.
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As children we feared the monsters that hid under or beds.
We grew out of that fear,
Leaving us prey to the monsters that sleep beside us, IN our beds.
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