Ode To The Perfect
Perfect is the broken cries of the lost souls
Perfect is why I can’t help but scream at night
It holds my worries and my imperfections
It makes me who I am and want to be
Perfect is a constellation spotted in the sky
While the bare eyes are spewed with galactic glitter
It reminds me of everything that has ever been
And everything that will ever come to be
The days where I will be alone
The days where I am not
To the perfect, for never being quite perfected
And everything streaming and leaping
Through quaking minds and hearts
Love is far from perfect
But that moment you catch a glimpse of your lover
Where that moment will lead to a life full of love
That is perfect
And the squeaky wheels, and the beeping horns
And that memory of the time you were young
And that you will never be young again
That is perfect
For as long as the heart pumps its dazed ichor
And we go about as machinery
Those things that make machinery human
Those moments where the code breaks down
Or lines up perfectly on the horizon
Like a sunset setting far off
Never to be seen again
That
Is perfect
Tranquil
Baby blue skies
Fading clouds burning up
Disintegrating into static
Take my eyes and place them here
Lay my body next to them
Let me see the world
Without a subject painting it
How the wind tastes on my irises
Smiling blades of grass
A gentle chatter of green
I can only see tranquility
If only my body conveyed the truth
Then life wouldn’t be so much different
Than death
Every moment I can, I close my eyes
To tread death’s path
But I become blind
To the color of decay
I block my ears
To hear death’s song
But I become deaf
To the language of pain
I close my nostrils
To smell death’s aroma
Yet I become anosmic
To the stench of nature
I clamp my mouth
To taste death’s food
And I cannot taste
The tears of loss
I glove my hands
To embrace death
But I cannot feel
The frost of hell
I sit by the grass
I cannot hear it talk, only dance
The sky is still static
And the wind has no flavor
But if I deafen my brain
And clamp my mind shut
I discover I can recognize life
On my body
And death in my mind
Truth in the spirit
A tranquil meditation
My soul’s salvation
A reclamation
As one of Heaven’s nation
C. Walker is a student at Cornell University studying physics, but when he isn’t in a lab or studying his equations, he writes. Born in Switzerland and currently living in Connecticut, he officially started writing freshman year of high school. His idols include Poe, Wordsworth, Yeats, and Dylan Thomas. His style tends toward Romantic, horror, existential, and absurdist themes, with a traditional flavor. He is also an avid musician and enthusiast of ancient philosophy. “Tranquil and “Ode To The Perfect” are his first works published in a literary magazine.