Only Butterflies Understand

Only Butterflies Understand
© Surazeus
2022 01 10

When I pick the stones from the grains of wheat, 
awake with joy as wind in leaves of trees, 
I hear loud thoughts of piston engines purr 
though children vanish from the city streets, 
since only butterflies understand why 
I fall wingless into void of my eye. 

When Bearded Prophet from the desert cave 
wanders busy avenue between stores, 
wondering if he should marry Femme Fatale 
or Manic Pixie Dream Girl in the church, 
he pauses by the cracked telephone booth, 
still reluctant to become Superman. 

Even when Dracula shoots sad Pierrot 
with pistol of jealousy in his heart, 
the moon-faced clown with tattoo of one tear 
smiles with pure joy to see the children laugh 
as blood dribbles between his trembling lips 
in bitter loneliness of the glass moon. 

Yet Deathless Mother on the ocean beach 
conjures vicious destructive thunderstorm 
from howling abyss of her monstrous heart 
to smash giant oil rigs with haughty waves 
that send it tumbling to the sunless deep 
because I love weird beauty of her soul. 

Howling across the wild Atlantic waste, 
the cruel storm-god with lightning in his eyes 
smashes thousands of houses with fierce gales 
which crumble into smoking ruins of faith, 
and litters parking lots with mangled corpses 
of people once alive with vibrant hope. 

Among thousands of masks from lifeless souls, 
scattered on streets where cars rust in hot rain, 
I find the tragic face of Jupiter 
that fell to Earth when his soul was struck mute, 
so I wear it as my convenient face 
when I fish for dragons in Caspian Sea. 

When the crippled vampire of Gothamar 
loses the election for president, 
Lucifer leads lost refugees of war 
to live in empty stores of shopping malls 
where ghosts of preachers with blood-thirsty eyes 
sell tickets to Heaven to fearful fools. 

Though I am only eight million years old, 
I know secret names of horses they hide 
in clockwork orange of my conceptual heart, 
so I paint murals of ancestral gods 
on brick walls of abandoned factories 
for children I raise with my Femme Fatale.