Malignancy I and II
Malignancy I
This is what we live with
Now that you have drawn
The very last straw
In the thinning stack
And we are bent to this
Disease which takes you
by the lungs
and begs you breathe it
into life again.
Once more, for the count
we settle smooth our scores
in preparation for this next round
of delicate damage, selectively inflicted
on the blooming rot that burns its way
across the humming landscape
of your chest,in which
a dying butterfly
rests its tattered wings.
Will you take it
This time or the next
Until the clockwork meets the rust
Mechanics slowing
To a weighted stop
I wonder if you know
That when you tell me
Ask me all your questions before November
I see the bones of winter tapping soft
Against the glass
And this I fear:
That you will bury
What has not yet drawn
Its dying breath.
Malignancy II
A strange before, in which we lived
Has come again to crouch between us,
Stretch its cramping limbs across this space
Bent itself into a shape
That we cannot ignore.
How fast the sleeping silence settles
Its smooth and gauzy wings
As a pall, diaphanous, gleaming,
That temporarily paints your face
With paltry colors, shades of stone.
This wishbone splits unclean,
A thousand different splinters
Indecipherable to the clouded eye,
Which piece will you pick up,
Or will you feed the mess to spectral dogs
That from the gates of Hades moan
Their interrupted song.
I mean to say, I am afraid
Of whiplash from your crested acts
Conducted as a symphony
To drown the howling storm
But patient peace presents its challenge
As a broken birdsong, a shivering leaf
Crumbling in its fragile spots
And tempting seaward winds.
These years before, which now unfurl
Their sun-spotted shrouds of skin
Across the wide and weeping desert
Before us now, call to us to reckon
With what lives within the molten flesh
With curling fists and calcified veins.
We must recall who we once were
If we are now to tame the past
And rid it of its wormhole riddles
That we might make of this
Something more
Than bitter endings knocking coldly
Against our knees, behind the door.
