Schisms

We are winded and on the ropes. Backwater banjo boys strum against us. Clouds feed upon a shoaling light. A bad day for going out or staying in. A time to be sleepless. We must live timidly, or push deeper into a glaring daylight toward the drugged dreams of the wide-eyed, go shopping in the poorer parts of town seek thrifty ways to survive among the striving, give all our prayers to the birds; then eat them. Some say they have heard the sky flap away but many stuff fingers in their ringing ears and gainsay both the seen and unseen. There is no sanctuary in night's lean pantry, the ransacked are laid bare. Many pick the pockets of the anxious rattle catch-penny cans on shoe-strings. Misgivings trespass, tumble ever inward until reason becomes the reason to flee. Paltry inklings gnaw at ever longer nights, and we wonder what ‘tipping point’ tipped what lid flipped; what line was crossed as an ever louder twanging strums on?