The path of old gravestones

by Yvette Eisen McBryde

You have followed the path of old gravestones

Right from the start there’s the nihilistic undertones

Down the streets into the trains

The wheeling winding tunnels

Shall make this journey harder than most

But at the end

There will be a girl

With bright golden hair

Women have been seen as prizes at the end of long journeys ever since the odyssey but

So long as you follow this path as it has been set we’ve taken on this religious meaning from .

.                                                                                     the divine comedy

The walls are adorned with

Posters behind mirroring glass

Do not look, as it is vain

There’s definitely a religious framing but i think that’s metaphorical

But sneak glances

Check to see if you have maintained perfection

There will be nothing if you have not

Like this could be telling you about how if one sins then there will be no heaven but also there’s

also something like ‘if one doesn’t live a beautiful life then no one will remember them’

You do not know

Or cannot know

If she will be there, the girl

This motif of the girl at the end of the journey being presented as an angel at the gates of

With the golden hair heaven

You have heard whispers

And doubted their sources

What you do know is

There will be a graveyard

This is obviously about how religion is providing a comfort of belief but also, I’m going to a

Going on graveyard today and there might be a beautiful girl there. The prize for my long train

    journey. I think that the religious framing shows a little bit of my desperation to belive

And on    things getting better

And on

But you have been told

And you really do want to believe

And maybe that alone will be

Enough. Enough for me.

Your heels will snag and

An aesthetic act is something that we do with the sole purpose of making something more

Catch on the cobblestone beautiful. I think that my life will be defined by these aesthetic acts

and i have seen the stitching on tapestries, i’m afraid that i won’t be dedicated enough to do

As you climb the hills   something truly incredible

Belonging to souls

  There will never not be reminders all around me of my fate. Beauty will be no match because

nothing will be a real match but i will always think that it will be a match because i really feel that

it is

If you stop to gaze

At the hillside that has

Been a terror to climb

You will see the glinting oxidized brass

Adorning the granite, beautifying the macabre

There is this tension inside of me between what is right and what is beautiful. I want to do the

right thing and be good and find meaning in my goodness but i am afraid i cannot. I want a

As it is strewn out  grave and i want it to be a beautiful big waste of space that will not help

anyone because of my selfish need for some kind of physicality that shows that i was here and

In front of you  it to be beautiful enough to mean something to someone

A picture almost too beautiful to bare

You might spot a glint of gold

The streets are unkind to your galloping feet

As you barrel down the hills

Trying and failing to find Her? Anything?

The sun on the polished stone will keep hope alive If i hope or believe or do anything like that i

will have given up an authority that i have over the truth, that i know it. Terrifying truth does not

have power if it is known because it can be come to terms with. I know, i know, i know. I believe

has less power because belief is faulty it will never be enough for me so i must reject it, but in

rejecting it i confine myself to being unhappy and i don’t want that. Because what if I’m wrong

and I have given up years of happiness for a sense of warped assurance. Then i have used

wrong hedonistic methods of numbing pain for all of my life and my final wishes isn’t an act of

beauty that assures my place in a world that i am not in but an act of evil, a disregard of morality

that will define the rest of my existence in the universe.

You have to stop this

This intervening, intellectualizing

Emotionalising

You have two options

You can return to a state that is liveable

Adjust yourself to they ways of your world

Or you can live above yourself this has gone back to the religious motif, above yourself, in the

clouds, in heaven. Wrapping back around to the start

Bathe in the beauty that

The you who is not you has constructed

But you cannot do both

This, this cowardly straddle

Of two opposing states of being