Jean Marble Poet Free verse

Sun-Ripened Misery

I.

I don't observe
the day between 
the summer solstice 
and a midsummer's eve

anymore

I've abandoned the rituals
that commemorate
a shift in season,
my over-ripening years

and celebrate
my sickening sense 
of hope.


II.

By day, I could apply 
a defensive membrane,
an anti-cancer cocoon
to protect me 
from the shrapnel spewed 
from a blooming sun 

but night permeates my skin
and wishing stars curl up beneath
like a thousand tumors

challenging fonder memories
with disappointments
and memos about
shrinking days.

III.

Midsummer crepuscules
open sour-lighted wounds  
and drip watercolor ghosts 
down the sky

leading my desire back 

down 
to withering earth

and into an arid darkness
blistered 
with promissory dimes
and a thick, weeping moon
that can't forget how to cry

over nothing.

IV.

I still crave so much
the hope 
of quickening molasses
and the warmth
of long, rum fingers
from fermenting skies

but the sun-poisoned aches
of famine and fullness 
always alternate

a layer of sun 
over a layer of sin.


V.

I'm contaminated 
by an anonymous hunger 
that spoils the wine of day, 
and curdles the milk of midnight

I reap
love, laughter, happiness

the crops of heaven

but they never satisfy 
always turning tides of emptiness
on my tongue

erasing summer sun 
with doomsday shadow.

VI.

Give me the gift of Heaven,
a contentment sterilized coma,
a throne in the cusp of Gemini and Cancer
and I might wish instead
for a pyre in Hell.

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