Us All

In hunger, my belly aches,
of clawed darkness, I’m afraid,
to forsee what is to come, I’m blind.
—just a reflection of all else.

On damp paper you may sit,
on thorned cushions someone may,
to the vast universe, insignificant.
—just a reflection of all else.

To linger, is in the hands of time,
but as the rest, home waits as death,
merits mortals with same eyes.
—just a reflection of all else.

Fields of wombs
grown on unsteady soil,
the ides of May, harvested
and cast into the fire.
The brand is seared
into the soul,
yet we scoff and sneer,
while we dangle on the branches
hanging on for our dear lives,
of the same burdened trunk;
of the same root that sired
us all.

—just a reflection of all else.

There are certain smiles that bend the broken crooked,

certain shades of green light that wilt flowers in the field.

It is an ‘as if autumn walked in with a jug of herbicide

and started perfuming life with death.’

Yes, certain smiles that stand on stilts to prop them up.

Smiles leaving someone so bent that they see nothing

save for dirt staring back at them.  

There are certain smiles that bend the broken crooked.

The hour is an uneasy,
the hour is exasperated,
it paces from one room to another,
taking great strides
to pull me by the wrist
and take me straight to bed.
Not yet,
give me a second a said.
I thirst for a swig
of what this bar has to offer.
Neat! The hour is impatient,
no chance for me to relish
growing old,
no way to feel my insides glycate,
it wants time back,
this itching hour.

A warped mirror perhaps?
My face always twisted,
always grimacing behind a dry beam.
Two Tylenols are never enough.

Ella.
A lump caught in my throat.  
Her scent walks by,
uninvited, yet welcomed.

A blurred outline,
a cutout blocking the light.
I yearn to sweat nightmares
out of my pores.

At night, her voice still fogs
the thick wall of silence—
muffled.
“Are you listening?”
Obscured echoes stir
down the pit of this endless night.

Tulips grow somewhere
on the side of the bed,
where it whirrs and beeps,
and reeks of alcohol.  
But the night is ever still,
unperturbed, as it sleeps in my arms.

Murmurs drift like dust motes,
caught in a sunbeam—

Ella.
I chase shadows of her laughter,
fading out against gushing white noise.  
Fingers twitch to speak,
for words are somehow
lost in static.

The walls hum a song,
croaking with hurt it sounds—
“Stay with me,” it pleads,
but my indifference swallows
the words.

In the spaces between breaths,
I linger suspended.
Ella might be digging me out.

Yesterday hid behind the dense
switchgrass
on the look out for us
to light candles of thought,
so it may remind us

of scent, quiet but lingering,
of a fragrance, infused beneath memories’ skin
and ferry us back in time.
seeking forgiveness,
seeking that we might forget,
on the eyes of restlessness an obol shall rest
and leave what was as dead,
as if a rash, cooled to no longer rage,
to no longer itch.

Yet, we can’t forget.
Unbidden, yesterday returns as spring
but with a hint of winter
and the frailty of things.

Do must we,
But break clocks
And wish gears lost,
In the end we are found
On the road where we
left our ghosts.

no matter how you rove,
you can't trust roads
to lead you home in the
winter.

on occasions, she brews
a tempest laced with
coffee to wreak havoc
in the morning,
and at night,
in between restlessness
and nightmares,
her back holds up a sign
that reads "no yesterdays
allowed"

gone was our youth,
tarnished like trinkets
coated with gold
peddled and sold
like empty promises

sometimes,
white flags are waved,
and we find us wrapped
inside arms that used
to be used to be our home
but the years took
its toll and had us evicted
out of boredom

deep in her eyes,
I see that she is there
at the moment as a misdirection,
fleeting like a daydream fading
into the background
but in the corner
of her disquieting eyes
there is a pulsating
dark light yearning
for emancipation.
There is something
behind their walls
that I dare not behold,
lest, my heart turns into stone,
a monument of brokenness
deeply rooted where it stands
waiting for time to weather
it into dust for the wind to
scatter

it's utterly tiring
to spit words
that leave wounds
for us to dress with
never-again bandages
for in time,
in the most inopportune
circumstances our deathless
animosity just
seeps through

yet,

as voracious as we are
to be alone, we atone
for still we loved

we can't always
trust the roads to lead
us home in winter,
but if take the good
with the bad
maybe one day
we can look back
at our madness
bold enough to say
though our hearts betrayed
still we loved.

Warring colors busting at the seams,
the day-burnt sun's fists
sag and dip into the clouds,
weary of the battle the night has won.
And the night sired children,
restless as the dawn,
riveted the dark with metal sheets
and armed it with visions
of an obscured future
polluted with hollow promises
stirring in their minds.  
Hope lay dying,
dank with mold and blood,
her cries met with clogged ears
and barred doors.
They were against mother,
she who fills their bellies with
rice and corn,
she, who pours water onto their
glass to the brim,
she who softens their fall with
carpets of moss for their bed
and canopies for shade—betrayed
and thrown out with the wolves.  
Now these,
and what sorrow to behold
hands holding up their voice
snatched and pocketed
for a bushel of grain
to fend off pangs of hunger
away for days,
in return, all their tomorrows
until none to spare.
Mother why have they forsaken you?
You gave them life,
now they bring you death.

—e.d. maramat | erwinism