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Kevin Gish Oct 2015
the old man edges along, his palms crushing the backs of chairs searching for something like home.

i despise him in this moment: i loathe his paunch protruding shamelessly into private spaces, his shoes- lumps of plastic fastened carelessly with velcro.

i sniff arrogantly at this fountain of filth, catching an unmistakable stench: it is death, draped over those shoulders- a ghastly garment leering at all around him.

but
Kevin Gish Jun 2014
A thunderstorm now blossoms, stealing the sheen from a lambent sky.
Selfish clouds harvest light, storing it away for security,
An aetherial currency long-forgotten.

But she remembers, hiding amid grey flannel bedsheets.
She remembers all: the birth of the ground as it fell from the trees,
The death of the moss that hoped for more.
She remembers the haunting shriek of the pterodactyl, circling into Oblivion.

In her room on the moon, with doors of ancient bone and holy song,
Locked away from the great hereafter, she hears the whisper of a promise meant for a whole world and falls asleep.
Kevin Gish Jun 2014
I met a man with a Y for a hand.
Addressed him timidly, "which war?"
An earnest reply: "the second."

He then went on.

His words were water, gently flooding my mind.

'O pliant paper sea, kindly permit those words to flow from me and into Thee!' For I fear I may drown, held under too long by the rapids I have become.
This is my stranger, the moments he shared:

'Father gone, too young to forgive.

The neighbor boy's '41 Buick leaves dust on his new bicycle.

Upon a cinder track, Father's fleeing footsteps spur him on,
For his is a sadness only speed can overcome.

I know not by what good grace he 'scaped savage Okinawa, with her Endless line of bayonets, but I do know this:

That cinder track, in devotion absolute, forgot its form, stretching from an Imperfect oval to a path at once straight and serpentine, leading you from foxhole to foxhole, past ambush and anguish.

No victory lap here; just heavy iron tread snapping shoots of bamboo spread for a finish line.

Silence and silence alone greets him as he collapses post-race, leaving three fingers to Okinawa and departing post-haste.'

I had all but succumbed to his tale, each new sentence a towering breaker Pummeling me into the darkness of my aquatic consciousness.
I reached out, finding a precious grasp extracting me from jealous eddies and Lonely currents.

Though our handshake held seven where ten should rightly go, it was yet more complete than any I have known.
Kevin Gish Jun 2014
I killed an insect once,
Crushed it with a rock.

I had to; its fate was already decided:

This insect had too few legs; they bent away
From its body as it struggled proudly towards
Nothing and indeed found nothing.

Pity took shape and brought an end to its odyssey:
Yielding to the rock, it accepted that it had just come across its noblest hope for a way out.

Fear took hold of me;  my own rock was sure to come
Soon enough.
Kevin Gish Jun 2014
Fear is youth, youth is perpetual.
Perpetuity is the pleasant melancholy awash on the scarlet portrait hanging in every motel room.
Kevin Gish Jun 2014
yellow memory is absentminded ecstasy
Kevin Gish Jun 2014
Alone wasn't a word until the door was closed; each sound in this place
Spells your doom.
The soul has places to go, you know.
It's feverish to fill, to take the essence of "I" and scatter it every which way.

Once you fall, and you will fall:

O, then see how the soul works!
Your charm is a sea-gooseberry, your love seeps into the fog,
Your smile is now the Sun.
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