I.
I, at once, expect both more and less,
That here you will find only what I find,
For this life, the past and yet to be,
is as much for you as for me.
I both offer and curse my soul,
As I lay here draped in the stillness.
My body, every bit, formed in the soil of this earth,
Born of two parents, as they were in kind,
But just thirty-six years have passed, grasped in a mere moment,
I pray that it is enough,
I pray to continue,
Until the calming of my last breath.
The world has been felt in abundance, crowded,
I have retreated, but I know it is still there,
And never forgotten.
I long for good or evil, something,
Anything,
The chance for words without restraint,
Unchecked, down into the nature of being.
II.
The house is filled with the tokens of strangers…the shelves
are filled with the memories
Of ghosts in black and white photographs,
I can see the resemblance in the eyes,
They will take me with them if I let them.
For six weeks now I have lived near the dead,
While the other children learn and play,
The air inside has become stagnant, it has no taste
of the previous incantations.
They whisper that I should venture out,
It would be good for me,
among the leaves of grass and wooden fields.
I can still taste the fresh air in my mouth…
I shall return and breathe it in.
I will go mad with the openness.
The sound of my heart beating,
Echoes, ripples, of former youth, stretched out over the weeds,
The passing of blood through my limbs and air through my lungs,
The wind of a false country, envious of the smoke
of the nearby city, It calls to me with words that ebb
without understanding.
A few worrisome embraces…reaching arms…that fear
the next day will be the same, forever.
But there are a few moments of play
in shine and shade,
Where doubts do not linger,
Then the delight alone, rising from bed dissipates,
And the ghosts want me to come home.
Have you felt the void between dreams and reality?
