The End Of Infinity

 

The stairwell goes nowhere.

It cascades endlessly into emptiness—

Hopes lie dashed somewhere at the end of this

infinity.

The flowers bloom,

but there is no scent.

Bees do not come here.

The apparent look of life

hides the death that encroaches day after day.

There is a weeping sound in the wind,

you won’t hear it,

but I do.

It is the familiar sound of wailing minds.

I pause, listen, and weep.

There is little else to do.

We have been dying a long time,

and though the bodies no longer litter the streets—

The dying has not stopped.

We die a little every day,

peering down the stairwell that goes nowhere,

reaching in vain

for the hopes that lie dashed

somewhere at the end of this infinity.

 

 

 

Of Nightly Dreams

 

Unwelcome thoughts

fill my mind, their acidic bite like a

rash from poison ivy or stinging nettles.

 

I wake up from my nightly dreams,

shivering from the nightmares—

 

Still I keep fanning hope for tranquil nights,

nights filled with dreams of folly,

dreams of laughter.

 

I push unwelcome thoughts away by day,

packing every second with meaningless bustle

unsuccessfully postponing the moment

that I must fall asleep.

 

And in my troubled slumber,

I flee from things that I can never outrun,

defend myself from attacks that never end,

bury interminable numbers of bodies.

I wake up drained

confused—

without the strength to face the world.

 

The taste of dying and bitter hopes fills my mouth,

I long for days without shadows moving in the dark

when the menace lurking in my dreams

is blunted by easier times.

 

 

 

Strongman

 

Neon lights fill my vision and my dreams

I walk

Talk

Peer through your eyes

Window of my world

Seeking to ascertain,

The truths that have become so shallow.

 

Belief leaks through myriad holes in my mind,

I falter,

aghast

at the persistent

constant buzzing of powerless humanity.

 

And I stand here,

Upright.

Me.

I who have brought you to your knees

I who have bled your mind

I who have delivered your children

To mindless apostasy.

 

I smile

Knowing you know me not.

 

Look in the mirror

Ascertain.

For you- truth has become too shallow to see

So am forced to tell it to you-

you are me.

 

 

 

The prayer

 

Beneath a gnarled tree trunk,

Pockmarked and studded

With moss and fungal colonies.

She sits

and prays.

 

A paraffin lamp flickers,

And the shadows cast around the hut walls

like demented and disturbed spirits

mock and taunt the woman

 

She prays…

Eyes wide open

Transfixed

By moss and putrid fungi.

 

Revulsion wells up inside her,

heart mottled and pockmarked.

Shame resides there

Parastic,

Leaching life,

faith

and hope.

 

She prays

Seeking relief,

Finds none.

Prayers go unheard,

God lives here no more

Only humans…

Ah, humans…

 

Agony abounds,

There is no way to undo the hurt,

no way to erase the pain,

no way to unmake what’s made

no way to unrape the raped.

 

And so shame

Grows,

Like a fungus colony on the tree stump…

A fungal infestation upon this heart.

Waiting To Die

 

I am the living walking dead.

My life, scattered-

Buried in hundreds of graves around this place.

tiny pieces of my life, scattered, dismembered.

Father,

mother,

husband,

children,

brothers.

Then I,

walking about,

half insane

waiting to die so that together we can be whole

again.