Veil
Pacing to contemplate
Makes little more than packed dirt,
Roving over the coastline
No more than wasted life.
Nothing could provoke
Forefit to the bonfire
On the hill more than
A veiled ghost.
The sole ritual that
May cleanse the embers
As they claw at the night sky
Is the finicky passage of time.
I have learned to never
Question the way the ashes
May sow themselves
In the wind,
As if they seamlessly intertwine
With everything but the
Bleached divide between land and sea
Which so clearly attracts them.
A gray beach.
What fun it would be
To walk such a place
And playfully kick at the dust.
To be a child in Pompeii,
To point and giggle
At the volcano as it spews
Such dazzling lights all around,
Maybe then we could
Rest knowing that
Embers don’t draw blood
But sting nonetheless.
And thus the ghost
In an ashen veil reveals itself:
Forever married to the concept
Of unadulterated nothingness.
The Bindlestiff
His no heritage of millions,
His lonely feet that roam in concert;
He may feel aching soles
Yet he suffers no discomfort.
He’s the only one who has a compass
But can’t point to home
With anything but a sweeping gesture
Before continuing to roam.
He isn’t on the road,
He is the road, nestled beneath a streetlamp;
A patchy sleeping bag, squeezed between light and dark,
The guy who sits in everyone’s camp.
He’ll tell riveting stories
Of nights spent in broken cars and university lots,
For he is but a bindlestiff,
Starving a stomach that was already tied in knots.
His life is a mere whisper,
His name a passing thought;
Nobody knows better than the bindlestiff,
Whose life and living are hard fought.
Sometimes you’ll see him
Gaze at the haze in the smog-ridden sky;
He’ll spread a toothy grin
And, without a word, just sigh.
Because, you see,
A bindlestiff has the roaming call;
He has the biggest heart, the widest smile,
But he questions if it was worth the fall.
Stay
Stupid how I twist my
Tongue and wring out
All the chidden syllables
You hear in "I’m doing alright."
Something changes every
Time I utter such a phrase,
As if the next time I say it,
You might actually do something, but don’t.
"Sorry you had a bad day," and
"There’s always a way out"
Are the usual attempts I cast into
The gaping expanse of yesterday to change tomorrow,
So maybe if you hear me
Trying to change, you might see that
We all feel the same way.
You know that, right?
Screw the jacket that everyone
Touts, because underneath,
A mess of sliced and slicked skin
Yellow with sweat bleeds them dry.
Sounds hollow—I know.
Trying to be okay
Always hurts, because covering
Your heart is the only language left to twist.
Sanctum in this godforsaken
Town is hard to come by,
And when you leave it,
You will always have a home here.
When you go,
The trees’ll still grow, the leaves’ll still die,
Andy will still be playing with you in the
Yard, and the old firewood by the shed’ll still burn.
Saints still won’t exist for us,
The pits of Hell will still come knocking,
And I’ll cry because I know
You’re on the other side of the door.
Don’t Fall Asleep
I can’t go to sleep
Despite my ashen eyes.
I’m surrounded by family and friends
Who I want to stay before I become a pillar of salt.
Every time I shut my eyelids,
I see what agony burns behind them:
Nothing, unadulterated nothing, framed by
The shadow of the room’s amber lamp.
My friends say goodnight,
Give me hugs, and
Speed home before the
Drunk drivers come out.
The fire bubbles in my gut
Like an anxious jury,
For I must stand and deliver
My own damned sentence.
The moon reaches its precipice
In the hazy night outside,
Illuminating my pale face
As my family trickles from the room,
Like cracks through a dam,
Like my future,
Like how I drown in the sea
Of my own deliverance,
Until my father is the only one left.
The room stills. I still.
I fear that, if I move,
He’ll remember that he must go to sleep.
My eyes root themselves
To the bright television
And lose all time
In its warm glow,
Framed with darkness,
Until my dad stands and
Says goodnight before crossing
Into the other room.
Like a switch, the inferno snaps off.
A vast, bitter expanse swims in my vision
And punches through my chest
While the TV keeps talking to me.
My vision fades
But my eyes stay locked
On what remains of
Who I used to be.
Empyrean
May our voices ring to the skies
And build on each other.
The unified cry of division.
The eternal martyrdom of injustice.
The baby boy pondering our struggle
In a nearby house takes its first steps,
For we shall not arrive home,
And then it shall become one of us.
We sing the national anthem,
But amid tear gas and ruined choirs,
Among the riffraff of tomorrow,
I cannot fathom why.
The boy leaves his house,
Locks the door he could not reach,
Turns both cheeks to his maker,
And races toward the exit.
We sing our nation’s anthem
Without hesitation or hindrance.
We sing different songs.
They all say the same thing.
The man reaches the barricades,
But someone puts a bullet in his chest.
As he falls, another kid in a nearby house
Watches on with unknowing intent.
He might become a noble leader.
He might become the gun.
Our broken ranks garner the world’s eyes.
Our ragged voices draw the world’s ears.
We have not a name or a faction.
But we have names. We are each other.
