A poem of growing older and changing values. |
When you were young, you wore a crown of leaves and loam, with ancient trees falling in the evening light; the ghosts in the clouds rain tears of memories. Pushing fingers through your mouth and your sandy hair; you tap on the glass room of sun and green. Sullen signals to remove the clothes that bind a body in earthly form – with eyes fixed tight on the falling moon; the darkness binds paleness to skin. With pin drops and cold, silver screens, we sit and wait for snow to encase the trees and freeze your eyelids shut. Camera in tow, rapt in melting glory; skin forms lumps at your touch, and the saxophone plays the last tune of the night. Modeling clay forms pockmarked cheeks, burying ruby teeth alive, we sing the same dream around the world. So we piece together a puzzle and it's good to be alive when we know what it is meant to be; the sparks won't fly if pieces fit together such. It's so sad to see the world with ageing eyes, you take a tour of the rooms where your family was born, and sleep in the chair where your grandfather died. You tend the earth with shaking hands but seeds don't grow on mountain-tops; leaves grow in the cracks of skin as semen stains the soil. So chase the fragments of memories you hold dear, but the world laughs as you lose your brain; and wine and wicker baskets are fine for the eyes. But fruit falls on the infertile soil, and the world spins and night falls once again. So we pretend to sleep, pretend it's for comfort, but fatty fingers grind on the bones in beautiful movements, we bleed on the crusted soil. So pretend you know your enemies, and treat empty space as empty space, but you kicked the bucket twenty times before we noticed a change. Now you dream forever, place your body next to mine; you will never fear again. |