In Pieces

In pieces, A moment of resurrection, From the empty grave A cradle Where chained in silent reverie Lies my pride with my past. Fatherhood lends grounding An understanding of purpose Like an oak Grows older Sinks deeper into the earth Becomes one with it And is trapped. Everything I write is repetition these days. I feel I’ve lost my voice, Lost it to bland existence The every day struggle for subsistence Voices at war in my head In my heart and all around me Voices at war With one-another, with themselves, With God. I sit here writing this poem Nothing to say really, Nothing important Nothing vital Taking nothing too seriously As nothing appears serious enough Wanting nothing more Than a pair of young thighs And wet heat in between the rest matters not a shot in the dark and the world’s all a spin fades away, like a dream. Like youth, Like life itself. Noises, All around me, Inside outside, My head, my heart and beyond Shapeless shapes like shadows Forming, drowning sinking deeper, Deeper into me And there, growing and growing so big as to drown everything, even thought and reason, season after season, nothing endures but the unchanging stride of change. My mother the painter My father the engineer A match made in heaven, Strike a match Set it to kindling Watch it burn Bright as a dying day Bright as childhood hope Chewing itself to ashes To a cold pile of powder Weightless, Blown away by the first breeze, Gone. The devil in me Resorts to poetry to appease his sins. The godly in me is silent Or absent, Or dead, Regardless, he speaks not Not a word, Not a whisper When he should be screaming. ‘There she blows’ The white fiend Spawned from the depth of thought Rises to the surface Stabs at the sky, Spews her waste to the blue heavens Then shrinks away underneath. Carlos