And Then I Said "Touche"
by The Prophet, December 19, 1999
Be forewarned, this is a long poem, but I think it's the best one I've written and I tried to make it into the form of an epic. My friends tell me that this is the one that they like the most, though it's a bit long. I wrote this in the space of 2 days on a bout of inspiration. If you have any suggestions on how I can format this better, it will be greatly appreciated.
Canto I
Lady of Pain,
Why do you torment me so?
Or why do you torment me too little?
Or through this waiting
Am I to be satisfied?
The Marquis wouldn’t say so.
Mistress of Deception, and
Fair Cruelty.
Though your shades are not fair.
Not in the context of fairness,
But in the meaning of
Fair.
So near you stand,
Yet forbidden I am to touch.
Do you roll your dice at me sir?
Or do you throw them in my direction,
To indirectly insult me, so
Therefore directly threatening me.
Do you stand to lose,
While I fail to win?
There’s no such thing
Or concept as unrequited.
Though it may seem so.
I was urged to forget,
Urged by the only person who knew.
I already realized my loss on my hopes.
But being the foolish person in love.
I continued with what I felt.
Continued to enjoy,
Knowing that soon I would be struck,
Struck with the reality that I was only dreaming.
But I continued to dream.
And again I find myself standing
To wait, to wait for
My Lady of Pain.
Canto II
And so I left,
Or did she leave?
The waiting time was over.
My service was finished. And
I shall never see my Lady of Pain
Again.
For my luck and chance
Do not favor me,
But rather do the reverse.
I regret the day when I had the chance to injure
My Lady of Pain,
To have my retribution,
To make my Mistress
Feel what I have been feeling.
What she makes me feel.
Now she has left,
Left before me,
Left without me.
And I can’t even remember the color of her eyes.
Eyes that were light,
Hazel, blue or green,
It didn’t matter because she was my
Fair Cruelty.
I desired her above everything,
She made everything that I use to long for become
Simple and plain, no longer interesting.
She made what I thought once was the most charming
Into dullness.
She enraptured me with everything that she embodied.
She was far beyond my reach,
Yet was so close,
But now out of my vision was
My Lady of Pain.
Canto III
I was drowning in her fiery waves,
I remember.
My lady asked if I had enough,
And all I did was shake my pathetic head and say
“I don’t care.”
I didn’t notice what she was doing.
I was just lost in her waves,
For those few moments when
Fair Cruelty was trying to gain
My attention.
Attention that I would give anything for again.
Fire was always giving,
Yet I always refused.
But soon I accepted,
But clumsily I took.
I didn’t know how to take,
Though it was through kindness she offered.
But when I did take her smile was that of
Pure happiness.
So often the stars shone upon me,
And I couldn’t help but be happy.
But the bliss would never remain long,
It was gone as soon as it had come.
For I never really saw the present,
But rather the future and what would soon be in the Past.
At least it was better than spending a whole day in
Torment, suffering, depression, and
Obsession.
Those were my afflictions.
Afflictions caused by
My Foreign doll.
The touch was often,
And it burned each time.
Though I never did anything to stop it,
Or anything to return it.
I feared to yearn,
I feared to become attached.
But to me she was mine.
She was my Lady of Pain
Who belonged to a Foreign Lord.
Canto IV
I heard of her whereabouts from a stranger
Having a conversation with another.
My Lady of Pain was going to be
Staying in a isolated,
Yet crowded place
That people went to often.
But only for a few passing minutes.
Taking my chance I took two companions of mine
To visit the place,
They didn’t know of my acquaintance or feelings
For my Lady so they
Never suspected anything.
It was the last time I ever saw my Mistress,
But she was even more enchanting,
And fulfilling than the light of day.
She was more entrancing, and beautiful
Than the gifts of an Angel.
And she was always giving.
I would’ve stayed if I could,
But it was forbidden,
And I had people waiting.
The situation would’ve become awkward.
I failed to notice the color of her eyes again,
Though I looked at them often.
The sun of her twisting locks,
And the luring smile of my Fair Cruelty
Only distracted me.
But her eyes always held me,
And I would find myself pulling away each time.
She asked me kindly to help her,
Even if I didn’t belong to her anymore,
And I obligingly did.
I didn’t do it instantly,
But instead mocked her first,
Which I regret now,
And helped her after.
My farewell was done quickly,
Though we did part saying that
We shall meet again.
On my part I knew that was false though.
How was I to see
My Lady of Pain again?
Canto V
As days became misery,
Days that dragged on for what seemed to be centuries,
And life was just a tool to torture me.
Visions of my Lady tormented me within
My head,
I no longer had to be in her presence.
I wasn’t sure if I should be happy when I saw her,
But when I thought of the truth,
I would become angry,
I would hate fate and lose my happiness that I had Moments before.
It grew worse every day,
And I thought,
Before I left,
When I would see my Foreign Doll everyday,
I was just infatuated with her.
But now I [realize that it was more than that,
When my Lady was gone forever.
Too late I was in my realization that was caused by My denial of the truth.
With her I was nothing,
Without her,
I was still nothing.
Now I was surrounded by darkness,
Battling the demons of hopelessness in my own cage.
My hopelessness of the fact
That the visions of my Lady of Pain
Will fade from my memory with the passing of time.
Canto VI
So time left me nothing to do,
But to think.
To think of nothing but my lost Lady of Pain.
Of how I would never see her again.
Of how my chances were next to nothing.
Of how I did anything, and everything to try to make
The chances better.
At least I did see her once more,
Before she left to cross the ocean to visit her Foreign Lord, who resided in a place of business.
She was giving a farewell that seemed to be almost final.
She was happy,
And when I think of that moment,
I am happy too.
My only content memory of a lost longing.
The world was full to me,
But I didn’t want it.
I never wanted it.
I’ve always wanted something that I couldn’t have.
I gave up my thoughts to feel the pain.
I gave up my companions to be alone,
To think.
To think only of my beautiful Mistress,
To feel the hand on my heart, slowly squeezing it.
So I had to try and forget,
To shut my Lady out, but each time I tried,
I felt like the villain for trying to kill the feelings that I Had.
Response to anything with a positive attitude was
Useless.
And when there was a response to take notice of,
It was in an indecipherable language of mixed
Words, and actions.
This was my age of insanity,
Where nothing made sense,
But myself, which no one understood.
My Lady became my life,
Though she was not there.
I could still remember her,
She was the only thing in my whole life that had
Ever really inspired me to write.
I began to doubt myself in everything I did.
I doubted that I ever had any emotions for my Mistress,
That it was all just a feeling of awe.
Of how one person could affect so many,
Or mainly just myself.
Fair Cruelty was my Muse after all,
Even if she kept me bonded in my chains,
And made me suffer for what I was feeling.
Though she never knew what she did,
The main cause of my own deterioration was
My own doing,
My own fault for letting myself feel this way for anyone.
The innocence of My Lady of Pain will always be True.
Canto VII
Why did I yearn for my Muse of Laughter?
Why do I obsess over my Lady?
If it was obsession.
I cant’ explain how the human mind works,
I could just explain what I was feeling.
Only my principles and morals stop me from what
I wanted to do.
Life is so long when you wait for something with an Empty reward.
A reward that you will never stop wanting.
Will Heaven punish me so?
When I do not even believe in the Holy Kingdom of God.
Why do I wish to find someone there?
A place that does not exist will be the only place
Where I will be satisfied.
Where nothing is forbidden.
But if the Kingdom of God did exist,
And I was to go there,
I would be damned.
Damned for loving my Lady of Pain who belonged To a Foreign Lord.
And then I said “Touche”
Canto VIII
On the most unsuspecting of all days
I met her Foreign Lord,
And I envied him with all the passion of my heart.
Envied him because he held my Lady.
This was the first time that I’ve ever actually envied
Someone.
I felt ashamed for my feelings and punished myself
For my temptations.
Though the man acted kindly to me in front of my Lady,
He despised me with equal hate.
The Lord treated Fair Cruelty well.
He pampered her with everything she wanted,
He treated her like a spoiled child,
But not as a wife, not as a lover,
Almost like a pet.
But how am I to know,
That I would be able to treat her better than him?
How am I to know that maybe I would be a failure,
And even more that what could’ve been lost,
Be lost now.
What gave me the right?
To believe that I was better for her,
That I loved her more?
When I didn’t even have the permission from society to
Adore her?
I finally confronted my Mistress’s ]Master] and
Confessed myself to him.
He only heard of me from my Lady.
When I saw her again, all the feelings that took so
Long for me to suffocate,
Came back in a rush.
The hit almost made me crash to the ground.
Though it was a hit from her Foreign Lord.
I recovered quickly to return the strike,
But my movement seemed like molasses,
Compared to the running of water.
I felt, and could taste the blood in my mouth,
The Lord was not doing so well himself.
My Lady of Pain wanted us to stop,
It was useless protest because the man was relentless.
My Doll was for once helpless,
And it relieved me to realize that she was human,
A human that was a Goddess in all forms.
It was through sheer luck,
That through our grappling,
Our pathetic primate action,
That he fell upon his own concealed weapon.
Maybe it has always been predestined that the one
Bearing the weapon shall always fall upon it as a
Final gift to its master?
May the Foreign Lord find comfort in the place his Soul will find.
For I don’t think it was found in my Lady’s arms.
Canto IX
I looked down upon my Lady of Pain,
Funny how the one who held power over me was
Now just a common person.
A common person like myself.
She looked saddened to have lost her Foreigner,
But she was not in tears.
Not my Lady,
Not for her Lord.
Our greetings to each other were brief.
I stared into her eyes,
And the torment began.
For once I knew I did something right,
But my temptations,
My thoughts were still forbidden to me.
She was pure,
She was innocent,
And I couldn’t pervert her,
Or force her to do anything,
Though she might have wanted to.
Fair Cruelty’s perfect façade shattered, and she Screamed “No!”
She claimed of sinning,
Of how everything was a sin.
This was God’s punishment for her thoughts of me.
An innocent was slain to compensate for her sins.
God would only forgive us now if we stayed apart,
And lived honest lives she claimed,
But in the end we’ll burn in Hell anyway.
I told her to Hell with God,
If we were to end up in Hell for whatever we did,
Why don’t we just do what we wanted to do if we
Were already damned?
I never believed before that my Mistress was a great
Follower of the Christian Religion.
She used to mock it.
I couldn’t stand to watch the stronger of us slowly
Breaking down,
Falling apart.
I wanted to tell her to stop it,
To tell my Lady that God didn’t exist,
That he didn’t rule our lives,
We ruled it ourselves,
That we weren’t going to Hell.
But how could I possibly break her faith?
Break the only thing that was keeping her sane,
The thing that was making her insane.
How could I break her heart?
While she was slowly tearing mine apart.
And so I turned away from my Foreign Doll,
Turned away and said “Farewell” for the last time.
For the last time to my
Lost Lady of Pain.