Thursday, July 24, 2014

A Deadman's Wish

How soft the river bed is 
gently lapping upon my feet. 
Time is lost as I look downstream
eyes open unblinking
How many days?
How many hours?
Has it only been a moment? 
Am I too lost in beauty to know 
the length of time I have laid here.  
Nothing moves here but nature 
wind through the leaves
water racing beside each bank
light into shadow and back again it turns.
My body needs no more
stimulus to drive it from its seat
It is good to rest old bones
it is peaceful to settle old flesh. 
So nice are these times
no hunting to madden my heart 
no screaming to fury my soul 
no sorrowful laments silent in my mind.
Gods please make this steady
make this constant a river flows.
Let my dead stay dead
let my soul be at rest. 
Cover me with silt to nourish the ground
for generations that still have yet been born.
Make me a stream 
rushing willingly to my end.
I am tired 
I am hungry 
most of all I am willing to find
my peace after death.
I would cry if I could. 
Weep to show my intent 
But my eyes are dry as is my flesh 
all but my feet.
As I sit without time beside my river 
rushing for the ocean 
to take it home.
What pieces of me become part of it 
I hope will be happy knowing 
I wish for all of me to be home as well. 

Monday, July 21, 2014

A Deadman's Lament

I am no longer aware of when
it was the first time I went mad. 
My memory has failed
just as my heart lost faith in everything. 
All I know is that my world is silence
in the void of what I once was.
I recall here and there
the happy of what was lived
in memory shared with or about others
before the darkness took its first bite. 
Do all of the others feel as I 
in their hunt for something great
could each also know 
the similarities of the emotion I long for. 
For them I hope not
because for me it’s lonely here
locked in the darkness of my mind. 
Everything is on automatic 
reacting only to outside stimulus 
like heat, motion, taste, and sound. 
All the while I sit watching
banging ethereal fists against my prison. 
Walls hard and course like stone
but alive and present like water without air.
Hunger, is a word both my body
and my mind understand. 
They sit across from each other at that table 
drinking from the same cup. 
The senses catch another impulse 
and my body begins to move.
Slow feet being their trod 
toward a glory known only as yearning
My body smells the fear
my belly rumbles at the sweat 
my mind screams, “oh god, no more, please run, not another, not yet.”
They are rabbits cowering with fright
my body responds to instinct. 
I become more than just imagined fears
more than the boggy man lurking clothes at night.
The look on their faces says horror
the taste of their flesh sings divine. 

Monday, July 14, 2014

Pastiche of Yusef Komunyakaa' "My Father's Love Letters"

Little Things by Jeff Lee 

She swings her feet freely back and forth.      
Small white shoes polished to shine.                   
Catching the moon’s full luminous glow reflecting white on white.
 As she swings she also sings                               
a tune of mice and clocks                                   
running hickory dickery then stop.                   
In her ignorance is innocence                             
Knowing nothing of what has happened         
or anything of the great beyond to come        
My job is to tell                                                     
her what will befall her next                                
on her road to salvation.                                         
A shepherd one traveler called me,                       
the great and mighty decider some used,          
soulless bastard cried another.                       
They all cried, screamed, and pleaded.               
It is their nature                                 
to want more   
of the life they had lived  
no matter how full or empty                             
they want more.                                                    
Her head turns in my direction                            
eyes a pale blue                                                       
“Hi, why are                                                            
your clothes so black and smoky?”                      
She does not know me                                               
I am just another person to her                      
a stranger on the street.                  
“Clothes are as they need to be”                   
“Your dress is pretty”                                               
“Mommy made it for me,                                     
she cried on it though.”                                                 
“Can I go home now, please?”                              
My job only allows me a                
purpose, never a choice or favor                        

I am death, even when it hurts.    


Original Poem: http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/komunyakaa/my_father's_love_letters.php
(I only matched the word count from each line)