The child that climbs
Into mother's lap
And squeezes her
Hollow syphoned breast
Drinks instead the tear
That falls from mother's eye
Until he is forced to bare
His bare-boned back
To carry her to the grave.
Child, not buried, already dead.
Mother, buried, but never lived.
I sleep in the crisp cadence
Of your voice floating.
The lights blur, passing glimmers
Of street lights,
Rocked by the cradle of your lap
In the car.
Colours float in the melody
Of apples and grass
And afternoon sky.
I don't look up to see the stars
Anymore.
I am eye to eye with the
Wonders of the world.
My hand bridges
The chasm of when life
Was still new.
It claws onto time—
Ripples of memory,
Stained by my fingerprints.
Our footsteps fall
With light-tread tracks
Unlike the missiles
That fly high above.
Why do we run?
Little Girl asks,
Why must we hide?
Innocence, warm and wide.
All-encompassing,
All too trusting—
We run because the stars
Have been kicked out of the night.
It's a race, my dear,
A dark and exciting race.
The booming and crying,
The running and hiding,
It's the last game before
God calls us near.
Where are we going?
We're going home.
We will tell Papa what we have heard and seen,
And Mama will hang us new stars to put in our dreams.
The end begins with the roughening—
Calloused fingertips against granite and steel.
Pruning skin stinging with the kiss of salt.
We climb into salvation,
Pressed against a marble tympanum,
With the waves lapping at the lintel.
Kisses are not honey, caresses are not tender.
Instead, we carve our hearts with bleeding claws.
Our teeth cut and bruise,
Tongues lapping and eyes stinging.
We are the salt of the earth.
We are the light, the brimstone and fire.
Yes, the end begins with our roughening—
But the beginning ends with the ocean made of our tears,
And we drink freely, hungrily.
All is welcome here.
How sentimental, how original,
To have your first act be an act of creation.
You "draw" your first breath,
And from this, so it begins.
Everything is bright and new.
Nothing is as wonderful as it has been
And nothing will ever again be.
What is life then, but a steady descent
Into atrophy, decay, and pain?
I do not rise into salvation,
Instead I sink into despair,
But even in death,
I am born and reborn again.
I open my eyes in the thereafter,
And once again, I am new.
But this world is a circle,
A turning tide deeper,
And what keeps sinking
Will one day surface too.