Shuttle Bus 17: A Poetry Collection

The Monologue of the Broken, Yet Triumphant

I caress the thorns you brandish,

A chillingly amused grimace you wear,

As each instrument of compassion I wave

Is pricked and prodded, blood surfacing

Through my hide, once maintained, combed

By strings of coarse horsehair that you and I

Would pluck after fetching pails of spring water

For the cattle, livestock, us against agrarian culture,

We would once craft percussion out of the

Pitter-patter the evening rains would produce

When making impact of the tin roof,

Every blemish a-top your visage I nurtured,

Declared a blossom upon the flowering

Euphony that springs when listening in awe

To the perfected vibrato and alto of your

Sing-song couplets you once hummed to yourself.

I used to document every little night terror

Or sleep talk you would expose, and devise a

Solution to ease away your discomfort,

But alas, the bygones scowl

Under present scrutiny.
Our pivotal cane sugar plots depleted

From a midsummer typhoon,
The game we fed heartily were found

Scavenged by village squatters,
Farmlands grieved, I tried prying away at

The final crops, the smoke caking my breath

As juvenile serpents learn to dispose their

First gusts of inferno,
I cackle as the phantom tickles my soul,

Clenching, gasping, kicking at the reaper,

My sack of flesh just barely pinky length

With my balm of spirit, steadily trotting

Outward by force of law. 
All the while you clung to my

Pulmonary, treading as a youngling skips rope,

I dismiss it in a trance, guzzling the sharpness

Of your arched lashes, your spiraling grimace,
A kitten bathing in the August air, without a

Mirror concern or altitude of impending anxiety.

I once prayed over crescent nights for that

Forlonging of patience.
I prolonged my studies, I confused my lackluster

For disposable leisure.
I am a Sinner in the House of the Reverend, but

Your inflictions do not propose my sting,

So lastingly, I replace your inescapable warmth

For the potential future of a flourishing family of

My own.
I take the remaining letters I had saved in the cupboard,

And watched pleasurably as they fizzle begrudgingly

To the wrath of the all-below.

I part my hide now gleefully with a refurbished

Comb of gull feathers.