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footfalls
beware ...
they are coming
I hear them as they tap their invariable
pulses on my spirit
like steel drums in the Cruzan night
all at once frightening
and irresistibly intoxicating -
the warm blanket,
doom ...
I find it unremarkable that
they match my heart's thrumming
vying for a truly prominent consideration
like echos of a tragedy
or the warning of a
bell buoy …
do you hear the footfalls?
do you hear the sound?
do you feel the shudder of
a furnace in the ground?
they bring sight
or so you would think …
a translated vision, raw
to a creator with no eyes -
floating, blinking, pulsing for self … for id
that bleak landscape screams to
be real - to be heard, felt
imagined …
the barren womb between the stars
and abject oblivion -
a frontier unreachable,
yet standing stark within my grasp
bleeding on my blade,
precise ...
do you hear the footfalls?
do you hear them come?
do you feel the measure of
the darkness that they plumb?
approach ...
I will know you
no hood or shouldered blade to dispatch
no gaping pit or sparkling wash of sky
no bright tunnel or flame
only a timid bite -
a nibble on the crimped edges
of thought,
that perhaps creation is not
just the stuff of gods,
but for any beast with the twisted acumen
or any blind fool with the luck
and two shiny pints of
amniotic fluid ...
do you hear the footfalls?
do you know their weight?
do you feel the tremble of
their auspices and fate?
in the hop ...
of a toe slipper
or the brash stomping of a boot
they come for all of us -
they come for one singular, inescapable truth
in the breath of a newborn
the losing of tender innocence
or the shiver of a spine
they come ...
for us all.
Copyright © Gregory Richard Barden, February 28, 2020, rewrite March 3, 2024
Copyright ©
Gregory Richard Barden
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