I watched through tears
--That streamed like the one out back
And the scattered clouds
--The ones that floated overhead for years
A twilit ridge inurn the sun.
It was one of those rising hills of my youth,
One my infant eyes always thought
Gave birth to the moon
Time and again.
With its innocent face smiling
That worldly crispness is lost
And the foggy past is far more defined.
Who are these forms I've lost?
They are but phantoms,
(I tell myself)
And now intangible, those memories
Acidic and dusted with sugar
Held suspended and taunting, like
Feet at the mouth of an open casket.
The cold, bitter knives of impersonal
Reunion
And rejuvenated promises
--Only now remembered, only now forgotten—
Illuminated once again
In the dark.
Passing onward and through
--Like our time together—
Exactly like wind through these **** dead branches
And this grave: winter-bare.
I remember the vivacity
How enlivened the sky, that I
Each day for granted took
And how so much smaller, in my youth,
The mountains afar looked.
But there is no home,
It died when I left.
The poison I fought
Has become the blood which pumps the heart,
Now corrupt,
Antithetical.
Nothing is more colorless, not sky,
Nor hill, nor moon,
Or ever more formless
Than what I once called home.
Now that only exists is deteriorated
A rotting house:
Four walls and a roof to keep
Hatred dry,
Windows and lamps, so
Hatred has eyes,
And all the people that
Hatred hates most.
How cozy it must be to sleep in
One’s own bed, no?
To have some stable place,
And an ounce of certainty?
As for me, that will never be
Again.
Though the house is open,
Lock, room, and all
The home is closed forever
Without a proper epitaph.
Vain death.
Vain,
Vain,
Death.
Now all I can only turn back
And flirt with shadows
Just outside my arms
Walk with images
Shifting, growling, and oh, so dark
--mere abstraction
--future so stark--
With no companion but defeat.
I can’t hug a memory,
Nor cry on recollection’s shoulder,
Nor can my mother or sibling console me,
And I cry alone.
Maturation is merely widening a distance, so
I should let them go,
Bid them adieu
Because, I can't be homesick
For a home
I can't go back to.