I step aside
to let you by
but then you say
I’d rather stay

a self forsaken son bleeds in his bed,
fathers scream rosaries at the undead,

broken angels dangle from debarked trees,
mothers carve their flesh with unanswered pleas,

paper-maiche sisters swallow pulped spleens,
Christ choking on a candied apple preens.

I push aside the cataclysmic gloom,
drink moonbeam light from the white river spume,
mock the snake bit reverend who forecasts doom,
and tap my shoes atop this nation’s tomb.

Under the flickering street light,
we wished each other a good night.
Words we may have wanted to say
could always wait another day.
There would always be enough time,
we were kids, alive, in our prime,
never thinking we would grow old,
or maybe we did, but never told.
Then one night, the corner was bare,
and then the next, still no one there.
An old man, musing on the past,
(when any day could be my last):
Tomorrows are not imminent,
but our yesterdays, infinite

There’s a comfort in this melancholy,
an old blanket fraying at the edges,
pockmarked with holes, too thin to provide warmth,
but familiar, that coarseness over skin,
a retreat into something I know well
when battered by anxieties of hope,
something to pull over me when I fear
a mild air will caress my bare skin,
and I will be tempted to close my eyes
and taste the crispness of a ripe apple
picked from the orchard behind my old house
where I laughed with people who are long gone
and dreamt of days when I would turn the soil
after a calm rain refreshed the deep roots.

walking blissfully unaware over
the ossuary and ashes of folk
who danced and loved by moonlight in this space
where we build our abodes and bless our hearths
break bread and lay in a peaceful slumber
beneath a night glistened by the cold glow
of heavens departed before their light
emblazed the passage we recklessly trod

old friends laugh as I drown
in a dry river bed,
and when they offer hands,
I ask for rain instead,
and when it does not fall,
I crawl to the near shore,
**** on shards of dry grass,
and claw the earth for more

the bone dry days accumulate
at a slow and torturous rate,
yet every night i find the way
to raise my empty glass and pray,
"Aye, so the clock does not restart,
bless this weary, still beating heart."