Crumbling Walls Rebuilt

Look at you wilting away in the corner, letting the water trickle down on your forehead like a victim of Chinese water torture.  You’ve been in this concrete box for eight months, and already the fortifications you spent a lifetime building have been dismantled. You act as though the debris has fallen around you, constraining your pathetic limbs to that morsel of space.  Are you not aware that another wall is ten feet away where the ceiling above is less decrepit and does not have water seeping from its cracks?  Why don’t you relocate so as to attain at least an ounce of comfort?  Where is your strength?  Submit you to a little solitude and all your walls come falling down.  You sit beneath the only reservoir this shithole has to offer, but instead of catching the leaking rain on your tongue and attempting to rejuvenate your rotting corpse, you let it land on your face like a metronome for your demise.

In the darkness nobody can see your shame as you bow your head and press your knees into your temples, tugging at your hair like you can actually rip this insanity from your mind.  You are your only witness, but you are the only witness that matters, after all, for you hold the key to your fate.  You can knead your legs all you want, but it will not relieve the ache.  Even when you are released from this box and return to the world, that pulsating tinge in your flesh will persist and burrow through your bones.  Now you know what it sounds like for them to be shattered by a weapon you held in your own hands; how blood smells when it pools on the ground before your feet.  They came after you and you reacted out of self defense.  It’s as simple as that.  You aren’t in here because you did something wrong, but because people on the inside are looking for the opportune moment to slit your throat and spill you dry.  Think of this cage as a source of protection.  Consider this your safe haven, not your dungeon.  One day you will evade this place after your time has been served, and you will return to your previous life and breathe again, but you have to hold on. 

Feel the air creeping through the space beneath the iron door?  That’s not a draft.  That’s your son blowing out his birthday candles, wishing that his father would come into the dining room and see just how much he’s grown.  That’s your wife exhaling upon the empty bed space, hoping that her breath will be answered by yours.  Have you already forgotten the ones you left behind?  They are outside these walls, reaping every moment of your absence like a daily vitamin, when, in fact, they know they’re imbibing hemlock.  They endure the pain because they remember the elation of having you close, and they believe that you will return.  Whether or not the reunion unfolds is up to you.  Do not let yourself succumb to the existence of a beaten dog locked in a kennel with a sheet pulled over the grate.  Dig beyond your sternum and your heart and wrench any dignity that still exists to the surface.  Move closer to that door and allow the meager light to brush over you so that your pallid skin may regain its color.  Better, yet, make the choice to move on your own and prove that you can still stand.

Beaten Tracks Deliver Me

It seemed as though nothing could evade the scrutiny of the full moon that night.  The sun was as far as it could be, but every surface emitted a luminous glow as if the dawn had just arrived.  Every stone and blade of grass that comprised the meadow had fallen victim to the moon’s influence, and I pitied their susceptibility.  I struggled to avoid eye contact with that pallid orb as I ducked into the limited shadow of the freight car.  I knew that I couldn’t stand to meet the same fate of so many broken hearts that had gazed upon the moon, hoping to find some remedy for their despondency, but only to discover that it was too far to help.  I was helpless enough already.

Objects glinted past my eyes like phantoms racing to fulfill unfinished tasks of a previous life.  I altered the focus of the landscape by diverting my vision further from the car and then returning it to its original state—anything to pass the time and avoid the onslaught of thoughts.  Eventually I settled my vision upon the woods, well across the meadow.  Beneath the forest canopy was the only visible darkness.  I wished to be immersed in it, walking amongst the other wayward silhouettes that had successfully escaped the light, but I knew that a man of my sorts did not belong in the wild any more than the place of my departure.  I hoped the locomotive would deliver me to some civilization that did not remind me of the forsaken town.

As the train rounded a particular bend, a horde of quail burst into the sky to dodge the thunderous volley of decibels that surged from the metal tracks.  They stained the atmosphere with a porous cloud of black and brown and suddenly my minute plot of shadow expanded to occupy the entire car.  I cherished my fleeting solace while it lasted.  While their bout of flight concluded and they violently returned to the earth, my route increased in elevation as the train began to ascend the mountain pass running along the meadow.  Apprehensive shrieks were more than just a reminder of the quails’ existence below, for they announced the advent of the apparition I feared most. 

The moon progressively eased more into view with every gained foot until it was visible in its entirety, taunting me from its astronomical perch.  I was snared by its gaudy radiance, unable to defend myself against the tirade of regrets, laments, and emotions that it ensued within me.  Suddenly, as though by involuntary impulse, my trembling hand reached into my coat pocket and produced an envelope.  I had read and reread its contents several times, so that by then I practically had it committed to memory.  The words of that final goodbye scratched across the desert of my brain like dehydrated nomads dragging their beaten feet along the Sahara sands: “My Darling, it appears as though our paths have departed from a parallel course and my heart no longer recites your name with every beat…” Before I was tempted to remove the wretched letter and brood over it once more, I clenched it between my contracting fingers, wrinkling it into a crude oriental fan.  Approaching the door to the moving train, I outstretched my arm into the turbulent wind and released the cause of my sorrow back to the hand that composed it.  I watched it rapidly flutter through the air until it was finally out of sight behind the rustic walls of the freight car.  Oh how I begged for an eclipse.

Elegy to SRV

I was fourteen

When the sound leaped

From the speakers like flood water

 And robbed my heart a beat. 

I couldn’t fathom how he achieved such presence,

Shaking my bones while I listened

With the force of hurricanes

And carving landscapes across my mind.

His attire looked like it had been removed

From the grave of a western gunslinger,

But it accentuated his six-shooter approach

To reviving the blues tradition.

He traversed the fretboard

With the purest grace, and his sound

Permeates my veins to this day.

Though I rejoice that such a legend

Could walk the earth so close to my time,

I mourn that he strummed his last.

I imagine the state of music today

And picture how it would have been

Had the heavens not claimed one more.

Still, I take pride in the legacy

That preserved the raw power of his fleeting life.