Tag Archives: poem

Temperance

Nostrils carved of ice,
the breath slicing through tender lungs,
attacking the warm muscle.

My calves caught
in the maw of my jeans,
like a dogs rubber toy,
no wrenching
or twisting
able to free it;
two layers deep,
in a sandwich of warmth –
hastily readied for the journey,
a school far away at its end.

So I ran.
Slammed the door behind me,
landing on the snow,
not in.

Everything an autumn leaf isn’t,
but landing as they all the same.
I ran, holding my weight like a skirt,
caught in a room of carnivorous formality,
and the snow permitted me upon it.
Having had two days of blistering cold,
beneath bright clear skies.
It was kind and unforgiving.

That threat – I knew.
I ran, and thankfully
never broke through,
I was untouchable.

Barbarians

Monsters pursue us across the Rhine,
like long dead nightmares resurrected,
our own corpses brought to life out of their time,
into ours with a fevered lust for revenge,
to live again.

They tower above the loftiest heads,
as thick as trees with ambitions for the horizon,
not seeing the walls or crowns
built to quench their desire, only what is past them,
beyond you.

When we were those monsters too,
you descended on us as crusaders,
knowing the needs we did not.

You conquered us, subjugated us,
and educated us,
so that we may yet be free,
under your regime
to pursue those needs you made for us.

Now, as they descend upon you, us, united,
our enemy, fast as white capped rivers rage;
we beg for intervention,
grant us now the peace you once denied,
let some part of us survive.

I, Father

When they were born, he was humbled quiet,
his heart taking seed in that fresh ground, quiet.

Much of the turmoil in his mind settled,
until even his feelings did sound quiet;

and when they were taken, to his own shame,
instead of protest they only found quiet.

The sapling he had been, grown in lush soil,
infertile now, withered with profound quiet.

Far too late, he begged for their love returned,
pleading tears until they were drowned, quiet.

This offense, his only true legacy,
Brendon’s mouth twisted up, bound. Quiet.

Desolate Dialogue

No window.
Just walls.
A wall of walls, none
of them matching,
even wanting to,
uneasy comfort among chaos –
chaos.

Breath takes, gives nothing.
Nothing is –
is

all that is left.
No window
or escape
for the false absence –
absence.

Deception
precedes the sunset
though
with no window,
who would know?
Know.

Lies as good as truth,
filling the void from wall to wall,
when all is unknown,
unknowable and alone –
alone.

Speak not to the walls,
when comfort is needed
they will sell you only
hollowed out mandates,
empty tidings,
sad husks of empathy,
your own absurd words –
words.

Tourniquet

Where the leg falls no flesh will connect.
The sock, the shoe – isolated.
Cold.
        Don’t,
                  don’t abandon it.

Warm stories yearning to be told
          in the distance,
                  aloft like sunrise in a clear sky,
                          like solitude.

The threads are there,
          woven in fragments of time;
let them lead you.
    Stumbled steps or confident strides –
                    no matter.

Let them lead you,
                      unravel
                          wrap all around you
                and there;
                      bind.

Transcendence

Beautiful you,
    I love you, for

    all your finality, for
    your outrageous irony to the banal, for
    your desperate questions, for
    your sober answers, for
    not caring that we don’t hear them.

Beautiful you,
    the compass of those abandoned
    the comfort for all great burdens
    the compromise to every cost
    the combative reply to injustice
    the end of all roads and the igniter of passions.

Beautiful you,
    oft I yearn for you to ease yourself upon me
    take me in your arms and squeeze,
    like laughs upon a deep breath
    as eager for the contents as their release;
    but I will not plead, not again.

Beautiful you,
    be always out of reach
    the distant sun that has set
    the word bound in paradox
    heard but maligned and unspoken, until
    at last,
    I have earned you.

Demolition

I wasn’t able today,
not for a few days.

They are so short,
while my troubles-
      long tired things,
heavy, hot breaths heaving
overcome the days with ever larger strides,
stretching shadows;
then fall-

like twelve stories condemned,
not pouncing, but plummeting on them,
the rest of the world obscured in billowing detritus.

The days buckle under the weight,
but they do not protest;
accepting the burden like responsibility. 

The troubles, wheezing, subsist through the nights,
just to wake me again.

Neither of us sleep well.