Here I am,
a tangle of roots
buried deep
and reaching down
deeper,
looking for a sign of life.

But no,
I sprawl and
twist around,
widdershins,
round and round
the battering thump
breaking the walls
under my flesh.

My waking hours
remember,
thick with the weight
of words left unsaid,
an iron on my tongue.
Unmoved.
Unperturbed.
Stagnant and decaying,
until I’m a stranger
to my own voice.
A crow lost in a cornfield
lulled by a scarecrow’s
siren song.

Like a crow,
plumes as dark
as a saint ‘s hope
wandering in the arms of limbo.
Wings bruised
for hammering obstinate bars,
voice hoarse for singing the blues
over dissonant chords.

Over and over again.
“Like a broken record,” they say.
Singing the same old song.
I have been.
Songs like plastic bags
of cans that digs into a tender
palm until the blood supply is cut.

What does the sky
Feel like on my wings
The stretch of endless blue
Soft wind threading through my feathers?
Tell me, the feeling has long escaped me.
Emptiness ringing in my ear
in the space between
where song once lived

Time has a way
Of erasing memories,
Of erasing wounds
and hardening them into scars,
of stepping into clear water
and muddying it.

Now the air is stale,
silence dense,
solitude burning red,
my bones rubbing against
my soul,
Leaving blisters and scuffs.

These heavy eyes,
the sky’s allure has faded from their gaze.
they have learned to shrink
into this smallness.
no horizon here
only walls,
and the dust taste of dullness
is vapid.

How I miss
how the sun makes
the salt on my skin rise,
or how the rain can seep
into my thoughts until
it colors it sad.

Now, there’s just fields of
milky grayness, playing labyrinth
until I reach the end,
only to be devoured again.

And sadness is too mundane a word,
at most it’s an espresso
that keeps you awake,
A defibrillator,
that jolt that makes eternity
an agony.

I am but a riddle I cannot solve