The Week In Review
Here's my writings from the last week. Things are starting to get too personal/self-centered, so I'm thinking it best to take a short break.
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I never thought
I’d live to see
an easy woman
seeking company;
Enraptured
by the bleating
of her hungry mates;
Captured
between the fence
and her mundane fate;
Bolstered
by the desires
of those she cannot sate;
Cold and calculating,
until she’s all alone;
And if she has not yet
been moved to tears
by irrational fears,
or unfettered words
spoken without trepidation;
Well then, I pity her.
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I was born in a new port town
where the James River feeds
into the Chesapeake Bay;
In my mind
I can still see clearly
the weathered remains
of the old fort’s walls,
degrading down at the shoreline;
And to this day I still
hold within me
the grim vantage
over McLean’s lawn:
The imagined stench
of gangrenous limbs;
The implied cacophony of splintering bone
and the caterwauling of men
already doomed,
but not yet aware;
This was merely the beginning.
-------------------------
It seemed such a simple task:
graduate,
work a job,
find a wife,
have a kid,
maybe two;
And now I find myself wondering
if it’s too late to even try
to turn it all around;
I’ve got my money,
and notches on my belt;
I wouldn’t make much of a father,
but I would try my best;
And I’ll be damned if I didn’t
give every single aspect of my life
that same treatment;
So how’d I wind up here,
in a room full of hollow stares,
stale coffee
and broken smiles?
When did life get so predictable,
so boring,
so effortless?
Wake up;
Punch in;
Punch out;
Sit down;
Kick back;
Wake up;
Who decided
that this
was how I
was going
to spend
the rest of my days?
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It was my childhood,
throwing clays in the field;
Picking wild berries
in the tall grass;
The dam’s siren,
and the deluge swallowing the bank
every hour,
like clockwork;
Listening to cattle,
grazing in the pasture,
on the other side of the river;
Stalking the woods with a .22,
while my father staked the property lines;
So many squirrels crucified,
just to be thrown in a cooking pot;
A snake without a head,
splitting it’s body down the sides,
its final grimace,
hanging in a tree branch
over the fire;
A hunting party as a young boy,
the smell of pierced intestines,
and the crack as antler
was separated from skull;
Catching catfish with tree grubs,
and throwing back the common carp;
Like that recurring nightmare:
In a bed with posts,
in the middle of a field,
with a blue tarp overhead,
shaking violently;
The cold nights
and exposure;
Seeking warmth around the oven;
Shitting in a bucket in the corner;
There was a baby bird
that fell from the rafters
of the new patio;
Its brain looked like creamed corn.
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c2016
Jacob Michael Peter Welch
