Bone dry promise baked in the sun;
the deed was done.
Like leaves, they fell
in that cold hell
belie the ground beneath our feet;
in foul deceit.
Their open arms
gave only harm;
wrapping around us like rapture.
The prey captured,
they drop their ruse;
our end: refused.
It enters each day, guttural;
a weeded stone facade surfacing,
the bog still clinging to the parapets,
and a hollow rusted trumpets lament:
“Tristadem, tristadem,” it sings,
haunting the space between.
Rising from those shadowed depths
to soar out the crenel lacerations
and lumber over the landscape
collapse bluntly at my feet:
“Tristadem, tristadem,” it moans.
My eyes furrow, bent in prayer
that the earth swallow this foul place,
the empty halls and echoes
the intermittent plummet of longing wetness
dripping drops of “tristadem, tristadem,”
on the dry parchment of any ears
hermitted away in that stale space.
Waiting for a days worth of dirt,
long wood planks nailed in darkness,
a place to lay one’s head,
and a thread to pull restless lips closed,
so the morose melody of “tristadem, tristadem,”
may never pierce them again.
Canned corn on a steel plate,
cooled a long time ago
when the sun was still ripe
and the chair was still on all fours.
Cigarette butts discarded on the stove
crumpled like crash test dummies
burned, brutalized and- left behind,
are only the parts that keep you safe.
The ceiling fan is motionless above
compensating at a tilt for the missing blade
dead skin piled on like a snow drift
nodding soberly in the gust from an open window.
A closed door with holes that fit like gloves
hides the muffled sounds of lament
from somewhere beyond desperation
lost deep in the forest of defeat.
No one has time to finish their meal.
not like this
not like this
not like this
If thunder could only speak through a trumpet,
that is the sound.
It is everywhere,
abruptly,
then slowly not- a passing flood.
A confidence of noise that terrifies the insides,
sends them scattering in all directions,
but bound to you.
the fruitless effort makes them-
resentful.
Desperately,
I wish I could capture that sound;
pin it to this page
and share it with you,
if only to prove to myself its existence.
When it rises again,
I am still broken.
A school bus made of rubber
out of control
too fast to stop
forcing itself through too small a gap;
the agony of that sound.
All life inside me fades as it does
replaced by uneasy stillness.
I can see no reason for it but-
something is wrong.
The scurrying of my insides
incites the space I find myself in to salivation.
It could be-
the way it feels,
the stillness;
I am already within the monster’s mouth.
There are no signs for or against this
just the absurd quiet between;
a caesura in the fear.
The hills outside could be rolling off
into a horizon unseen,
or the listless valleys of an ancient tongue overgrown;
the eater of worlds.
I feel it deeper now, its third report.
Like I should know its purpose
and it is violently disappointed.
The birth of a maladie underdeveloped.
Only trachea and lungs and noise,
no head or mouth to shape the air;
fumbling out this inelegant discord.
That’s the sound.
I imagine the world is silent,
lest whatever ill fate it portents take it too.
The years soak like rain
through the clothes
chilling the skin
torturing the bones.
In the now,
all the days before-
the days to come;
are a murky stew of moments
that obscure the current one.
I scream my first lungfull
and take my last,
prepare for another.
The stew stirs,
cools
congeals;
fresh off the stove,
and half finished.
I don’t know…
I don’t know…
I know only,
Today is tomorrow’s yesterday.
waits for no one – it but exists
and that is enough.
I accept the challenge
though it grows everyday.
I raise the sails each morning
towards that great whale
not to hunt it down in vengeance
but to explore its yawning wake
until at last it turns on me
and speaks solemnly, “no more”
having grown too great a future
for my sails to endure.
Three coins strung together around my wrist;
the toll for love is always at hand,
as many paid as has been collected.
One coin gifted for the love that defines us;
the love that plays beyond the boundaries of time,
and inspires us to pursue it more.
Another owed for the love that has been taken;
always too soon, should one live to see it gone,
but owed the same, for the loss costs us no less.
A coin borrowed for the love that remains;
languishing there, just beyond our horizons,
yet no less worthy of what alms we offer.
Last, the bracelet itself, held for my daughter;
who may have forgotten that love is still here,
but still kept safe, for here love will always be.
Gone
gone
thin clouds
the song of sunlight
muted without the praise of a place to settle,
kneading itself into the billowing cotton-
like panic trapped in a parachute
hurtling towards the ground
wondering
where it all went wrong.
Over me
overwhelming
but from its end-
impartial.
Alone, we are so many things
between beginning and ending
together, we are absolute horror.
From my end;
down here,
almost close enough-
the bridge between us
is devastatingly indecisive.
From its end;
hanging there,
it remains stoic-
impartial.
The weight is all on me,
until at last it is not,
gifted above;
for we are nothing unburdened.
If I can no longer be
the warm support
that allows the muscles to cool,
the bones to settle;
I’ll at least be the platform on
which to stand.
High enough to hang their troubles
and let them swing,
as they did decades ago in a box of sand-
impartial.
Though kicked away;
discarded,
I am satisfied to resign
having served well
in my time.
Enjoy the silences;
the waiting,
slow words.
Not having anything to do;
the leashed phone,
the unknown.
Bruises, cuts and wounds;
the bitter cold,
the searching soul.
The night without street lights;
uncivilized sights,
sunlit rooms.
Enjoy the world
as it was meant to be;
sober, subtle and unexplored,
because in the end
it will turn on you;
bind you in rope,
flood your eyes, your ears,
and leave you with no place
to call home.
Grow Gray With Me 