Death, thou art loosed!
My
head is full
Of
sounds of a shovel
Of
sands shoved
Of
rocks moved
Of
ground punched
To
sink a necessary grave-
Unnecessarily
too often
Too
close to the last
In
too dry a ceremony.
The
people I’ve buried
Graves
I have filled
In
song-less haste
In
war’s pointless waste
Death
is born.
I
grope in the past
And
my past is lonely and vast
Furnished
with misery
Well
washed with tears and worry
Ventilated
by gusts of terror –
my
past is packed to the ceiling with
memory
upon memory
loss
upon loss
too
often in this war-
Stacked
atop each as if
they
were trophies.
My
past is a place
famished
then abandoned
By
friends and the sun and the wind.
My
past is this place I can’t leave
This
home I return to
This
prison that shadows me
No
matter the borders I cross,
This
windowless trap
This
smothering grip,
This
past so vast
Acres
and acres of evil in my mind
Poisoning
where I walk
What
I think, who I meet-
poisoning.
My past is a memory
the
smell of blood of kin
stinging
pain of singed skin
the
sound of a flaring flame
of
a flame crack
the
harrowing fall of my life.
With
my hands I remember
burying
people
I had encountered
bodies
I had entered
The
hearts I had warmed
In
the season of love bloomed,
Lips
I’d tasted; the bonds now tested
By
death broken, I buried.
I
remember
That
I have lost to soulless sands
To
silent earth
To
rocks that clatter,
then
roll and settle
to
graves that cover
my
friends whose fatal
End
is an endless bother
that I couldn’t shrug at all -
this
memory so lonely and vast
Is
a grave that covers me
For
since then, I've been dead
Though
I walk-
