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Hezekiah Bates Poem
Was the purpose of your absence an attempt at causing me pain?
That crippling feeling, a spider spinning its web inside my mind.
That arachnid, poisonous, jeers the word space like a handicap.
That parasitic relationship forms a cloud covering the moonlight,
A fog that swirls like a whirlpool in your absence. How rapturous
Your paradox forming a bridge made from our memories. Broken and
Reshaped they become the foundation to a journey in that sea you
Created within me. Your withered emotions and fleeting empathy
were a false proposition of hope only a jester would find funny.
An exhibition of animosity lies in the silent waves – waiting –
for our sunset. How beautiful its rays are against the black water;
falling into the abyss, hidden under that rain your pseudo blanket.
Does the sunrise when you are blind? Does the moon set when
You can’t see the sky? That colorblind man sits there on the beach
Looking in silence. He cannot see his reflection within the water, he
Stands and walks to its surface. There he finds a crow crippled, limping
In the ripples where his reflection should be. That psychedelic feeling
Draws in his drowning breathe, falling into the sea. Paramount to his
Survival the man drowns, his understanding a paradox in his memory.
Only he, the crow, remembers the light of the moon. Its pompous shape,
that transcendent light, a memory to your decay. Only when yellow hits
the eyes of the crow will that white light fade beyond the thunderstorm.
He cries to the heavens, yet his speech murmurs under the weight. That
Black water suffocates his prayer, but he finds comfort in his anonymity. In
the presence of absence the crow longs for loss. He who is stolen from
wishes to be further buried, lost in the waves. That siren sings a fading
melody back into his ears. His own prayer an anchor tied to his feet,
crippled in your memory. Fractured in his own faith, what god heard
his suffering, his murmurs clots of air in a salty sea; black as the blood
from the wound you carved out in his chest. What blessing filled
his misery, that pseudo composition you create is a platter filled
with the feather of the crow. His words held sweet your grace,
an ensemble dancing in the mind of the forgotten. in the sea of
his followers he is Poseidon, yet still the crow sank, anchored in misery.
Copyright © Hezekiah Bates | Year Posted 2019
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Details |
Hezekiah Bates Poem
Grace is a forgotten sensation from the depths of green.
All I have is this cracked mirror, painted with sunflowers.
Calamity, my only friend, and yet I am the only one painted yellow.
Often the prayer of the ignorant outmatches the fool, but
swiftly our god is eaten by his own colors, costly his sins.
Torn by the seasons changing sunflowers into chrysanthemums,
appalled, green makes silence loud and yellow his accomplice to my decay.
Justice is a term the weak plead in gospel to an empty carcass.
Overambitious youth, his weapon that soothes the yellow flame.
Hepatotoxicity that word pierces my liver; green my liquor.
Never wanting the drink turned it into a bitter pseudo green.
Soundly you swing on that pear tree like the partridge with wings.
Opportunity is a curse the Angel promised before yellow’s kiss.
Nonnegotiable the angel leaves the topaz in May, without me.
My zaniest court jester, how cruel your jokes are against my eardrums.
I abrogate my speech in your presence and, yet your venom lies
there cackling sweetly to Medusa. Both faces to my disorder are
only happy when the clouds descend into a misty fog. That
menacing animosity leaves the hero paralyzed in fear, petrified in blood.
Fleeting righteousness is his tattoo, a permanent symbol of his failure.
Quiet yearning torn like that red jacket bellowing in torment with green.
Diseased kindness was the fool’s mistake, fellowship was mistaken for
your abhorrence. The gnome stands there gutless, seeing yet not seen.
Tired, yellow, lost a rhyme in my head that doesn’t rhyme. They are the
personification lessening the misery I spend with my disorder. A disguise
to your matriarchy, a laugh to the jester, and a knife to my colorblindness.
Copyright © Hezekiah Bates | Year Posted 2019
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