Tag Archives: Brendon Behlke

Tristadem

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.

Soliloquy

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

Metronome

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.

Yesterday

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.

A Chair Unburdened

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.

To My Younger Self:

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.

Sam Talks Back

Where I was trying to find control,
                  you lost it.

            I was growing;
awkward, ungainly,
          and to shape me
          you cut me down.

Where I would seek love,
            you gave me conditions
      and where I loved you,
              you absorbed the impact,
                      in the thicker parts of yourself-
                softening the blow.

Where you are, I cannot be me,
                I cannot be.

Cardboard Boxes

It’s not trash, but it should be.
      I want it to be,
but someone out there;
                  a memory,
        would hold it against me,
that tangible though brief history
                      discarded.
as if it didn’t live up to
    some archaic pedigree
          that would otherwise sustain it
              unto antiquity.

Is it not enough that we lived our lives?
                                        Survived?
                      Survive still,
to store those moments in boxes
        or lay them amongst the refuse
    and save instead that space?

How do we value emptiness
          against all the time that we’ve forgotten?