Thursday, July 8, 2010

American Blues No. 3



It's hard to live as if you have an answer when every cry you cry
you would, if you could bring yourself to call it, rage.
I am the sound of walking across the eye of God
as if I own the place, with the heart of my childhood calling out:
"Look at me, look at me, look at me!"

He doesn't look any different.

My steps raise clouds of ash in traced coordinates
across the wasteland of a luscious yard
as I fall out into the ruins of a perfect home
to live with the ghost of a beautiful woman
and sleep with faucets from upstairs
trickling down through swollen woodwork
to rain on my candled eyes until my vision smokes over.

I turn around, and all the trees have taken off their clothes.
They stand in the empty, naked and stark, like buildings;
the high-risen monuments to a concrete winter.


1 comment:

  1. To me this poem speaks a deep, old sadness at the ruin and decay of everything that might have once seemed so perfect. And perhaps, just maybe some bitterness.

    It sounds as if your are bracing yourself for the worst part of all. As if you've lived through the mere introduction to some kind of long suffering, and the real trial is about to start.

    "I fall out into the ruins of a perfect home
    to live with the ghost of a beautiful woman"

    Wreckage has already taken place, but the worst is yet to come.

    "I turn around, and all the trees have taken off their clothes.
    They stand in the empty, naked and stark, like buildings;
    the high-risen monuments to a concrete winter."

    Very foreboding.

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