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. 

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. 

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)