Sunken eyes & slumped shoulders
& unsteady gaits
traipse through the sanitarium.
Addicts, depressives, beaters,
abusers, schizos, crackheads,
meth-heads, alcoholics all
roam these commercially-carpeted halls.
Category: Poems
Tiny song birds impregnate the black sky;
Numbering more than the white points of light,
Dancing in the frozen vespertine air,
They fly carelessly through the windy night,
Talking to one another in bird-song.
Their song, such fragrant music, purple-dyed
by the darkness, carries away my cares,
Mem’ries of days failed and forever gone
might have filled my bloated heart, but no more.
I transmute day to day to day to day,
As do the birds, but not their timeless song.
It won’t change, the same it will ever stay.
Look at that boy there,
where he silently sits
with cheeks afire and sandy hair.
He looks at the vespertine sky,
blanketed by blanched stars.
He looks to the moon up high,
its light shattered into shards
by his frosted apartment window.
Before he drifts into a dream,
does he recount the things
that set him there
in that pinewood chair,
the lone furnishing
burnishing this vista?
Had his ship not come in?
Had she sunk in port?
Why do his eyes,
sunken by consternation,
moor his reddened face?
With somber resignation,
he looks at the Eastern star
rising up from beyond
the white-capped trees.
Will the boy ever
exhale his unease?
Look at that boy there,
where he soberly sits
with a salt-watered countenance
until the morning sky is relit.
Dawn:
Wake.
Still in bed,
staring upward,
I hear her sleep.
Last night’s fight casts
a viewless line
between us.
Arise.
Dusk
falls.
Seeing red,
waiting for him
to apologize
for what he said.
The viewless line
between us
remains.
I want to tie myself to my bed,
yoked to a downy jail using finest
linens. Like an old man, crippled and fed,
I want to lie down and forever rest.
But first, before I slip into retire–
do for me this thing, something I need dire.
Blind my eyes to what I find most vile:
the hot and heady hearts of evil men,
the scoundrels, pirates, sinners, and liars.
Women who smile and smirk, charm and beguile,
soft seductions by those singing sirens.
My head they bash; my heart they burn,
So spare me fright’ning, earthly things;
into crimson nightmares they turn
the sweet silence of my jet dreams.