Monday, April 18, 2011

Sojourner

~A prosaic poem dealing with the passage of time; inspired by my desire to revisit my own past.

mental decorators seem to have tarried in my endlessness. the shades replaced with iron bars; draped cloths upon the desks. eyes of ancient ancestors are watching dust fall, silent, down the hall. mahogany panels starkly flank me, rising far over my head. like a mausoleum cold, like a tomb dark and trapped.

footsteps ring within my skull like a hammer of steel on the anvil of now. dim fires that burned once in chambers of clarity snuffed out with a kiss far too cheaply given. the shadows that play in the darkness run down paisley corridors of then, as ghostly footsteps do echo before they do fall for they forewent forever many long years before.

all is dense like a fog on the lake is. all is cramped like an embrace of the desperate. the outline of a door ends the hall to my back. i have walked down this path for a long while now; turning often, seeing less than before. light is dying as is time, dimming sight of that door that i came from so many painful, padded footsteps before.

down the spectral blackened hall i can still make it out–why there’s no point in returning down the hall of my wraiths–for where the great door’s brassy door knob should be is a hole through which eyes watch me diligently.

and do not blink.


Car Insurance

~A memory I have of a rumor about someone I knew–a poem about the lengths we may go to if the world closes in on us.

drive me and park
where you want to
do what you need to
in order to insure 
that i get home safe
down dark asphalt
papers scattered on sidewalks
meant for passers-by and not
for me wishing that
i were walking them
in the cramped sweaty confines
of a seat now for two
you reek of regret and revulsion
and my only option still around
handsome once but now spent
car insurance–that’s all you are to me.

Photo by Tomas Castelazo