ODE Poem: An Existentialist’s Masquerade, by Ayaan Fahad

Play macbeth in a comedy
Place a void in light,
Be a pathetic masquerade
To an audience out of sight.
A beloved’s serenade
Obsequious to her divine might.

Be a philanthropist
A convicted felon,
An expansionist
Be Caesar, be Helen.

Be Kafka’s insect
Be Dostoyevsky’s nights
Be not Nastenka,
But a singer’s reprise.
An artist’s muse
His tragic demise

His descent to madness
His inevitable insanity
Every scribe’s fate
Sacrificial to the art
Sabotage, self hate.

Say a lonesome monologue
A soliloquy of solitude.
Act: an eternal ember,
Sisyphus on the verge of surrender.
Be nauseatingly miserable beyond repair,
Be a nihilist trapped in despair.
With rotten, wisdom-filled minds
Demons lie within thy mind
And heart, entwined with thy soul.
Commit a heinous deed
Murder thyself within, read.
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