After a time the road hides behind errant thoughts an oasis of purpose beyond the skyline just past the formless landscape in which I am caught anxious sand etching the mind where they are confined somewhere a destination waits for my return decades away, or two hundred twelve miles by the sign.
Though the same vowels and numbers and stories were taught the language we speak will never again align casualties to the war of innocence still fought despite knowing that both sides had long since resigned. In the ashes of conflict, fragmented, I yearn to take all those hardships and render them benign.
Roughly hewn bold shoulders pierce clouds hearing through the soft cotton of the sky in an eternal attempt to deny the cost which time at length enshrouds a history of chaos caught in contortions the passing days a gentle rain in the ocean
Where the transient will see might the ageless will recall violent trauma millions of years in tectonic drama to break the skin with vicious spite resigned to the cosmos. Never to move again until at last these same forces push them to their end.
They quake with anticipation an unbearable anxiety that brings them within reach of piety at the expense of damnation the earth a parchment on which will be writ its dirge should the progenitor finally emerge
By the time that day came to pass the monster spoke with fire now set free, “I give to the world what it took from me,” buried it in molten and ash then, at last, returned to the earth from which it came never knowing it had itself to blame.
Green rippled surface an east wind dance with the blades submits beneath a scaled foot the years pass collecting memories gathering like moss on a hard shell
The will to carry on within guided subtly moments that have or have not been mature patiently mindful of imagination burdens manifest the freedom to forget again begin unburdened
We made tunnels beneath the trenches convenience saddles convenience. Innovations bound to conflicting desires, duty ever at the throat of survival; a war all its own.
Dead sounds, all around digging impatiently stopping only briefly to hear past the heavy breathing the tremors from outside and within beyond the fear; listening for digging.
Somewhere down here another crew exists just like our own; different uniforms but always like us, digging, listening.
I can’t help but hope are they as afraid as we? will their resolve snap like a taught frayed rope? I echo the answer known.
Either way we wind up here on our backs, peacefully or on our feet, terrified and blind holding a thread bare hope that they aren’t like us.
Listening, I hear rhythmic pounding muffled by earth geography, culture, language until it stops… listening for us, for me- this translates easily.
We start again in unison clawing at the earth feverishly to end this, to put it behind or above us stopping only for a hint of a moment. every few feet we calibrate on the other.
The dirt between us feels lighter now easier to swallow forgiving where we cannot be. The tension between us is metaphysical. Two fingers almost touching between sandcastle walls. It is ocean waves grasping at the shore hidden depths haunting the water’s surface.
When our pickaxe breaks through there is a moment of metallic harmony a crashing of symbols. Sparks fly like a flash of summer light in the dark the perfect place to meet.
The tunnels are too small to stand in too dark to see too cramped to breathe, it is struggle enough to kill another but this close to hell beneath the war it is all the world’s anxiety, despair, and cruelty rabid; unleashed. Some die. Some go on digging. all remain buried.
“Don’t” my body demands raised hairs, muscle spasms merely the thought breaks me far be it for me to ever act sober bones settle the body lost though the mind tears are shed in its passing “don’t”
The broad surface – a stretched canvas of years sun beaten – weathered and worn a map of dead dreams and old fears scars like canyons and crags unseen forces clawing at the past with grotesque greedy spears to take a future neither would ever know exchange it for a few coins blood soaked soil and silent tears a story told but unfinished an ending like heat waves on the horizon the time since a prolonged epilogue a corpse that just endears
Grow Gray With Me 