Monthly Archives: May 2023

Carnival

The trumpets blared a jovial tune,
deep from the recesses of nowhere,
fanfare mixed with a shower of ribbons,
drifting to the barren lands below.

Far off and away
a dried-well village awakens,
slowly rising to life,
like a mirage, unbelieving.

From there,
the distant sounds are ominous terror.

To avoid the cannons fire or the bombs that drop,
what life remained –
              beyond the drought,
                          the famine,
                          the plague;
hurries to flee the parade,
thieve its chance to trample what years they’ve saved.

They scavenge for food, water, and memories,
place them in bindles made of shirts and table cloth;
                          cast     themselves       out            into       the        sand…

               Before the great machine can raise their dying town
                                  with its terrible jubilation.

               Before the sun can cut them down,
                                    burning white like bleached bone.

               Before the scavengers can consume what’s left,
                                  to live their days bereft.

               While those awful trumpets play,
                                  ravaging the landscape with sound and fury.

14 Wilkins St.

Brooding, it sits like a cataract in the eye,
        Invasive, meddlesome and menacing.
              Best burn the whole thing  down,
                      and search for fruit in the ashes.

The foundation – the roof,
          from root, to stem, to outstretched leaves,
                every soul that has crossed that threshold
                        is now tainted with corruption.

Some say the darkness grew there.
        Quiet like a mold you see but hide in shadow,
                not looking long enough to acknowledge
                      until it is the shadow, the texture of the walls.

Those who were alive when it was made;
          gestated, and labored over, know,
                it was built wrong from the start.
                        From the first nail in the first beam.

Neighbors windows opened like center stage
          on the day they broke ground.
                The audience loyal to the production
                      if only to see what, if anything, grew.

While the crew toiled to bring the place to life,
            they fell ill to the architecture;
                  the very design, a plague on the mind
                        caking them with madness.

They’d take it home and build it there.
            Unspeakable extensions
                  to the horror on Wilkins Street,
                          but return all the same.

Visit those horrors again,
              or have them visited upon them,
                    until all their souls were lost,
                          though not a one found dead.

The teeth of that house have dulled with generations,
              yet it still consumes from the inside,
                    scraping against the skin;
                        agonizing over the organs.

While all of Wilkins Street is shaped by its pull;
            those bright colors and picket fences,
                    dragged by that darker space
                          to a place where no light can escape.

Vagabond

Nostalgia is a weary hat in a lost town.
It speaks soberly of altered states,
and doesn’t belong there,
                              but it did-

                                           it did.

The brim is warped leather,
      the crown, sulking against the skull beneath,
with deep canals born of frowns and smiles
          indiscernible from those that rest

                                             on the shoulders

                of endless hours that bridge the days,
          swallow the years
and sever the link to innocence.

          It is a native-born traveler,
  returning as family,
but with the wear of life upon it,
            like a refugee denied asylum,
                                        home again
                a stranger in a strange land.

Love, Always

I would live forever
      if you would forever live too,
    seeking no end-
            only beginnings.

I would gladly see the world out,
  if when the lights dimmed,
        the quiet settled in,
  you too remained for me to settle into;
        find pale dreams between living.

I would suffer until it became white noise
    as long as our symphony remained
        rising above the audience of our years,
            humbled into silent admiration.

I would disappear-
        fade to nothing,
            if anything didn’t include you,
                    us,
                        this.