No one stays long
in the house of the bereaved

The hounds are lonely tonight
but not the priest

I dream I am still
in Tennessee grieving

Drinking moonshine
and branch water
looking for a fight

The undertaker creeps out
of the farmer's daughter's room

His wife beats a spider
with a broom then sweeps

When Death beats his child
nobody listens to her weep

My mother used to beg,
Son, don't write about Death,
We'll cross that ditch soon enough

I have nothing but respect
for the dead, I said

But there is no doubt in my mind
Death is a bad dog, a real *****.

Darkness drapes the night
Cold and thin, with a clear sky
An advent of stars

Stars made from the dust
of bones left from the fabric
of the universe

Universe expands
Dry and brittle marrow falls
Winter pitiless

In a midwinter night’s dream
  i found myself lost again,   
  or was it even this year ?
  It may even go back farther
  than yesterdays out of reach,  
  older than an ancient pyramid stone
 
Before the rebirth of past life deposits,
  unborn orphaned motherless sediment,
  flotsam of the ages adrift,
  unknown for more than a thousand years

... waiting for so long to see beyond the bounds

High atop a slippery edge-cliff
  i clung  ―            
Searching for a deeper understanding
  of who i am;

Roosting like a starving bird of prey
  with a broken wing
  born alone ... holding on
  With a fear in his eyes
that only i could comprehend
  
  Staring way down deep in the pith,       
into an internal pitch black abyss,
  just begging to see beyond ―
  Mindful it's so hard looking
  into the eye of a storm

Intimately parsing the recurrent source
  of reigning pain
Where the perpetual fog of isolation dwells;
an inversion,     preventing dispersion
  of the nimbus  cold  and  dark

In the darkness, there bides a suffocating
  emptiness,  
  A swelling silence what loudly knells,
  leeching through a perennial ache

An abating voice within hollers unheard,
  invisible as a bitter cold wind howling
  relentlessly through the hollow pang;
  Echoing the subsiding say
(squeezed out) ... of an orphaned soul
  deep beneath the light

Awakening to realize  ―  once i was alive
  and
i could feel me holding on to you



//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

a
chap
at
a
poetry
site
asked
a
poetess
to
send
him
her
silk
*******
well
his
request
didn't
go
down
too
well
she
was
shocked
by
the
audaciousness
of
him
wanting
her
tail
coverings
the
thought
did
cross
her
mind
that
he
was
of
the
cross-dressing
kind

Poetry is a constant nagging at my soul,
the instant tears that flow upwards,
a drifting fence in my mind,
treasure in my blood,
a coercion in my veins.
Poetry is a surprising flight,
just straight from the inner heart....

© Sylvia Frances Chan