This middle city weather leaves my fingers numb, lips blue. I have learned that waiting never grows old. Summer left knots in my spine it left my stomach empty and eyes heavy, reddened by wine. Summer leaves memories thick enough to taste. It is as if a brutal memory came and kicked in the door of this room and sat down inside. A type of sharp nostalgia that forces it’s way to the front of a mind, too vast and opposing to see past. I recall the sun’s slow crawl over the frozen ends of fall, which green forgotten days dismissed... This is the way that autumn always ends.
As a poet I judge my success by my ability to write my own escape. Learn new ways to pin back depressions eyes. Slip the noose. Write oppression into wine. Make milk from her skin to warm us both. Quilt a string of words into something comfortable to cover. To again pin back depressions eyes.
This middle city winter leaves bloodstains on my sleeves. It beats my nights into fragments, steals warmth from my sleep. I surrendered my dreams. Pawned her glass diamonds. Prayed the light back into her eyes. False agents run my veins. This bed is warm and impossible to leave. She has forgotten how to dream.
Crumbling tenements leaning to the side…filthy animal hands steal a bags weight…seven times a week…the tension of these streets…skinned knees and pinned eyes…perforated veins crushed by the promise of a half hearted heaven…a clutch of rabbits missing feet…a clover pressed in the pages of a dictionary…a poppy pressed in a Bible…a flight of concrete stairs climb four floors above the tops of bare trees…a hall of numbered doors…knock until my knuckles ache…the wind working like a wire brush…adding up the hours of my life I’ve waited at these doors…warm waves wash over me…a flock of geese fly a crooked V…the same slow train she came on is taking her away…left me at the station with the tablet where I forced these words…a shipwreck in the rain…
[ 18 December 2001: Message edited by: vocab ]
As a poet I judge my success by my ability to write my own escape. Learn new ways to pin back depressions eyes. Slip the noose. Write oppression into wine. Make milk from her skin to warm us both. Quilt a string of words into something comfortable to cover. To again pin back depressions eyes.
This middle city winter leaves bloodstains on my sleeves. It beats my nights into fragments, steals warmth from my sleep. I surrendered my dreams. Pawned her glass diamonds. Prayed the light back into her eyes. False agents run my veins. This bed is warm and impossible to leave. She has forgotten how to dream.
Crumbling tenements leaning to the side…filthy animal hands steal a bags weight…seven times a week…the tension of these streets…skinned knees and pinned eyes…perforated veins crushed by the promise of a half hearted heaven…a clutch of rabbits missing feet…a clover pressed in the pages of a dictionary…a poppy pressed in a Bible…a flight of concrete stairs climb four floors above the tops of bare trees…a hall of numbered doors…knock until my knuckles ache…the wind working like a wire brush…adding up the hours of my life I’ve waited at these doors…warm waves wash over me…a flock of geese fly a crooked V…the same slow train she came on is taking her away…left me at the station with the tablet where I forced these words…a shipwreck in the rain…
[ 18 December 2001: Message edited by: vocab ]
