wisdom

Listen to the Lyrics.

 

All my saints are rock stars and all my angels are the winged boys and girls on earth who, daily, fight their minds and are ever at war with their hearts.

A chemical imbalance sloshing around like water in a sinking boat on the sea of Not Enough. The others shake their heads, “All that wealth…” and I reply, “… was never enough.”

Money and fame are shallow ways to define success, and will never be enough. A thousand adoring fans screaming back to you the words that smoothed the edges of their broken hearts will never be enough to fill the holes in yours.

It’s like how you can still feel alone in a crowd of all your friends.

It’s simply a way to tread the water when you’ve found yourself thrown overboard without a float.

I can’t believe anyone ever picks up a drug and says I want to become an addict. I think all our drugs are just bitter ways to numb something deeply ingrained, a dark depth of the human soul most of us don’t know how to safely search. I think we all search for something to ease the pain or enhance the pleasures while we’re on this ride we call life, and some of us find the wrong things.

Maybe there wasn’t anyone there to show us that those things would do more harm than good, that they would kill us slowly or all at once. No one to say, “I need you here, and I will offer my hand to hold while you walk through the dark. This life has enough sunrises to get you high all on its own, and if the sun refuses to shine today, I will stay with you until it comes up again.”

Maybe we should change the stereo to play a different tune, where legendary writers aren’t alcoholics and all great musicians junkies who die by their vice. Maybe then we’d never learn the way the word suicide feels on our tongues.

I’ve always been afraid that all great minds were tortured, and what would become of mine? All the artists I’ve loved and admired and how the art that saved me failed them. Artists are magicians turning pain into beauty, and I cannot comprehend the day the magic runs out. That my art could ever fail me, that the storm clouds would win.

I find so much beauty in this world, how could you not believe in magic? Despite my loneliness, I’ve found camaraderie in characters of books, catharsis in the lyrics of all the sad songs, comfort in brushstrokes — the brilliant way chiaroscuro makes the light in an oil painting come to life.

The world may be filled with grief and strife, and wars are always harder when they’re fought with yourself. And while we may not always understand our dark, may we never cease to find the light of the stars, sanctuary in the glow of the moon, poetry in the way our tears fall. May the taste of the salt make you smile as you realize it’s the same salt from the sea, and believe you are worthy of the heights of redwood trees.

And may that epic yawp ring through your heart, that howl shake your bones, remember the power of his songs. Remember the power that resides in your lungs.

The same current that sparks electric guitars sings through your veins.

Let the music speak to you when all the other words may hurt.

“Don’t lose any sleep tonight. I’m sure everything will end up alright. You may win or lose, but to be yourself is all that you can do.” ~ Chris Cornell

And if you don’t love yourself tonight, I will take your darkness and love that too.

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Alise Versella

Alise Versella

Alise Versella is a twice Pushcart-nominated contributing writer for Rebelle Society whose work has also been published in Apricity Magazine, Crack the Spine, DASH Literary Journal, El Portal, Elephant Journal, Enclave, Entropy, Evening Street Review, Grub Street, Midwest Quarterly, The Opiate, Penumbra Literary and Art Journal, Press Pause Press, The Rail, Soundings East, Ultraviolet Tribe, What Rough Beast, Steam Ticket, Visitant, and Wrath-Bearing Tree, among others. She has recently published a poetry collection When Wolves Become Birds (Golden Dragonfly Press) and Maenad's of the 21st Century (forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press) and was nominated for Sundress Pub’s 2021 Best of the Net award.
Alise Versella
Alise Versella