A Covenant With Chaos

A covenant with chaos; For Chris

Why to seek it here when patterns there are none?

Though pending echoes haunt him since his firstborn son.

That something wicked must belie the gentle gestures of the meek.

And so beyond the bruised and swollen egos will he find that which he seeks?

At the silt and loam of swamp-fed roots, at first

The purple bellies of mercury-glazed birds bled out their thirst

Upon this dream, he choked on whispered covenants fed to hallowed ground

And wove a quilt of heart murmurs meant to still the sound.

At the bayou’s sinking bile he drew his bone and ground to chalk

To carve the unwound web of  path on which he meant to walk.

The split and spittle of waves on Alaskan glaciers wore

The flames and fairytale cocoons like fur to dim his core.

The broken spokes of a bicycle cast upon the fog-fumed bank

Where she, patient held out begging fingers, where he, hollow, his garnet heart sank.

Knots of ashen promises, taught pink corals of calcified intentions

The glass children yawned and rose, their salt-rimmed roots not worth a mention.

But not for apathy or lack of love for the pearls of his broken womb

Yet under spell of purple opium and crystal sharp filled rooms

His tangled knees prostate raw upon the moss

He scratched from skin the lies, the paint,  the gloss.

Why to find it there when find it one can not?

While spears of hunger diffract through phantoms lost?

When to breach the surface, blue of pastel horizons he has seen?

As the chance remains that there is naught beyond the moon’s bright sheen.