Advice from Two Men

I

You tear my face aside like a non descript curtain,
and look out and say, the rain hasn’t really stopped,
the scenery is pretty poor from here, look at
all the grey cement and the lack of sunlight,

the room stinks of failure, the food stale,
I feel bad for you, don’t you want to live somewhere
better, or are you too used to this gloomy life of yours?

I sit quietly, as the skin from my cheeks falls on the floor,
And the smile that was once hidden by my lips,
Tumbles to the grey floor of my grey life.


II

You look at the dark clouds hovering over
the dull market, the pigeons jostled in
the cramped by lanes of the dead city.
“How do I look, do you think I’ve changed?”
I ask, hoping to hear the story of where
I lost my smile, and the clues that lead me
back to when you used to touch
the roses in my cheeks, when the green
of my eyes shone all over the grey walls,
the birth of the Emerald City,
where you found your home.
But now, your eyes are fixed on the crowd
That is pulling off the stones of this fallen city
Straight from the walls that made it magical,
You smile at the revolution outside,
And stop breathing the air of the room.

I pick up my smile, and walk out of the room,
out of the city of my ruins, out of the broken green gates,
Into the forest of none, where not a creature lives,

where the trees don't sing their fruit tales,

but where the dark breeze
pastes my skin and my smile back on my desolate face.