Home » Poems » James Midkiff » Aubade On the Morning After

Aubade On the Morning After

Im half awake, and glaring at the sunrise
distant brilliance slowly eating at my dry eyes
squinted to best witness the aureate Apollo
refract off blades soaked through with dew
heaven's first blush, midsummer quiet, and coffee scent
cast clarity, light unveiling the burden
weighing down on every living being
clearest with the coming of the day
burning black holes into my brain's blank slate
sundering my soul 'till shatter state
fast approaches on the infinity of empty space
veiled out ahead of me

Restless with the lethargy of baring witness
I stir the pit, and catch flames leap up
from within carbon prints of gray matter
quelled embers lay suffocating beneath
ash dunes and smoldering phoenix feathers
matted and clumped by filmy deliquescence
spent of all but their will to rise again.

I grasp at the green broken glass
strewn about my feet like seeds
planted by last night's ignorance
and the sin of forced forgetting that
we all someday pay recompense
for our vice's and the gluttonous
way we all practice immoderation.

The world is quiet in lull
humanity lost to an illusion
breathing soft
and sleeping soundly
altogether

We exist
to want and rub against
the way the world turns on
a crooked axis, each moment less lucid
than those sunspots and dewdrops
coursing through dirt-clay veins and
branding the cracked dirt with morning

I cant shake loose the afterimage
imprinted on my blunted senses
experiencing everything I reach
is less than whole
understanding the universe
exists as fragments blackened in spite
of time's one plight forever pulling it apart

The sunset split the sky,
the fire danced and spit,
and the condensation clotted.
I seized eternity that morning
amidst the doldrums of sleeping masses
its truth intimate and calming.

I sense slumber cease and the suburbs rustle
the dreamers stumble about in waking
to shower away their sweat and dreamt delusion
start their cars, and drive away in sync
I listen closely to their heavy sighs
the shift of sagging shoulder plates,
bent under with Atlas tugging at the reins
kind's struggle never ceases to
echo off of terra firma, quaking
with each clanking of the chains
that bind our beating hearts to
alarm clocks, freeways, work weeks
and the torment of monotony

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