These burdens
Like tattooed tumors
Stuck on my shoulders
I keep them
Lovingly
For the sake of strained temples
With our mutilated wrists
Mutilated brain cells
Mutilated livers and kidneys
These cold hands
Are available to hold them
And those betrayed blue eyes
They flock to me
They’ve taken to imagining that
I have some answer key
Perhaps they’ve assumed
I contain those silvery white
Wisps of truth
Can you picture it in a jar,
In a kitchen cupboard?
But it won’t be contained
So we can’t have it
I’m among the tender-hearted, mutilated, blue eyed people
We walk naked in the
Overgrown rose garden
In the bleak misty morning
Savaging for what cannot be obtained
The scratches are left
Each a memento moiré
A reminder we must die someday
We are perpetually mortal
So time becomes sacred and scarce
As the hour grows near
The eternal fear is that our foraging won’t amount to anything
And in the spit second before
The wind kills the
Dying flame in the candle
We’re done; wasted
Good intentions shot to hell
Where we soon may follow
The thought alone forces
Streams to sprout on the faces of the
Scarlet stained, harvesters of truth
I’m just as frustrated
Yet there’s an understanding I will be the
Harbor for their ship of pain