So I was designing some wings for an illustration for project. Thought I’d just snag some already available on Google Images, but something in me made we want to write this, going, “SHUT UP AND READ THIS!”
….Okay, inner voice. Okay.
You don’t have to be so lazy, Mr Designer,
That you consign an Angel with a Swan’s wings.
With references open on each tab,
It’s comforting to think we have all we need,
But what search engine could ever search
For something that never existed to begin with?
Wings all look alike — some brown, some white —
As they delight to encompass the spin of the Earth,
But not all wings represent every bird that ascends,
Coz they only ascend to represent themselves.
An angel’s wing is unlike any other wing,
The plumes of which sing in abandoned gusts
That must be free from the rust of the snow
And the chill of dead, torrid sands below.
An angel’s wings are unlike any other pair
That care to curl in whirlpool of the void,
Where they stretch twist in eternal night,
Scorching, rebelling with infernal flaps
Where Up is down, and right is wrong,
Where the passing of the moment takes too long
For each song that rings at every knell,
“Which way is heaven, which way is hell.”
An Angel’s Wings are not so hollow,
An Angel’s Wings are hard to follow
Amidst the resonance of dying stars
Where ours is but a fraction of a dot,
A twinkle in our eye, where dreams unborn lie
With the cry of a babe in cradle by a song
In its mother’s voice, its father’s embrace
That dares not leave the nest.
And the rest of us still hang by the plume,
That if we fall, it’s with the horizons a moment longer,
Because we know, even if we dare not admit,
That our prejudiced halls have candles still unlit.
But an Angel’s Wings can flap that away,
An Angel’s Wings can sing the gloom away,
Ensuring it’s okay to be vulnerable in the air of doubts.
This is why the clouds don’t shy in their thunder and rain.
Even if the Earth has turned away from the Sun,
Even if the chapel still echoes our own burdened voice,
The last thing we need to hear is the sound of our Pencils
Bellowing, “How DARE you not even try?”
So try. The tips are prepared to break.
Try. It’s the one sacred thing you can make.
Because wings emerge, not from references of an open tab.
They emerge from your body,
Shirt torn, torso broken, lines curled in majesty —
Like an unseen, sacred marking in constellations —
From one dot to another.