The Best Of Us Poem by Syed Mizbahuddeen

So I stood there watching still, unknowingly still
Not knowing what would become of me

The flowers all had withered away
Said they would blossom some other day
And I was left with what I had summoned
In devilish darkness and death-like cold

The light eroded or was stripped away
Even blood turns blackest on the darkest day
So I was alone with the demons I summoned
Their screams were loud like a hundred needles
That pierce your heart till it shreds to pieces
Their faces were the devils own
That when you look at will turn you blind;
Are you my demons? My very own?
And who was I? I could not know
That when you turn back you descend to hell
Look ahead, it's nothing-but darkness and death

So I stood there still, unknowingly
Not knowing what would become of me:

Mere mortal mess, mere mortal sinner
Made of bones and hopelessness
Nothing more than earth and dust:
Frail flowers that hold the morning mist-
Even the greatest beauty is a slave
to cold times cruel touch.

Is beauty immortal? Nor is love
All things change and all does fade
God, I do not like your universe.

And amid all darkness I saw this:
That which makes us live also kills
The best of us, the best of us
The best of us and the rest of us.