Homeless Warrior
© Surazeus
2016 04 07
Jolt of electric terror at midnight,
stark of trembling despair for all truth lost
in swirling gush of endless singing stream
that ripples through my broken body fast.
Old photograph of wife and children flaps
in mocking wind and flutters from my hand
like crumbling leaf that screams when tumbling lost,
stuck in mud that devours sweet memories.
Face wrinkled like hillside blasted by wind
of old man huddled on cold cement porch
dissolves into landscape where wood homes sour
in rotten numbness of cracked aching bones.
Old homeless man stares through core of stale Earth
that spins relentless in vast empty void
of wind-battered heart from deep ocean rift
that gapes hungry mouth on moon of my chest.
My heart was gored by sharp bullhorns of grief
when my wife and kids were killed in a car crash,
so I drank to drown my pain, and was fired,
then lost my door key in river of tears.
Each night I sleep on second-story porch
outside dress shop that overlooks town stream
so I can feel fresh breeze from river flow
swirl gusts of air through labyrinth of my brain.
Phantom assigned to this porch by glass light,
I lie paralyzed in dream of contempt,
imprisoned in exile by swan of love
who froze my cold blood with electric shock.
I suffer seizures of abstract horror
when shadows of my fears loom in moonlight
and clutch my arms and legs with ripping claws
that leave no visible scars on torn skin.
I dream entire history of our whole world
each night I never sleep in stifling mist
that shrouds my throbbing corpse in panes of glass
which glitter from giant square towers of wealth.
I pray to God my father said was real,
hoping belief will save me from hot hell,
but I writhe in wretched hell of this flesh,
tormented by anguish for illusory hope.
Nobody answers me in silent night,
and nothing engulfs frail flame of my soul
with shivering raindrops that pierce paper skin
to weave me real with searing threads of light.
I sit hunched all day by glass door of hope
like statue of Buddha, heart froze to stone,
careless whether or not you give me money
because I chew your coins with broken teeth.
I am God who created this weird world,
ancient man with bleary eyes, tangled hair,
and paper skin on bones of fractured glass,
so ignore me because I am half dead.
You exist because I dream you are real,
for entire universe of galaxies
sparkles in tangled neurons of my brain,
and you are nothing but flashes of thought.
Old man hunched by dress shop looks in your eyes
and you see infinite space of all time
spiral outward from abyss of black hole,
so you fly in gushing whirlpool of love.
After he dies, veteran of foreign wars,
frozen to death on Christmas night, ghosts bear
his corpse to meadow where buzzing bees brew
honey in dead rotten tree of his heart.
© Surazeus
2016 04 07
Jolt of electric terror at midnight,
stark of trembling despair for all truth lost
in swirling gush of endless singing stream
that ripples through my broken body fast.
Old photograph of wife and children flaps
in mocking wind and flutters from my hand
like crumbling leaf that screams when tumbling lost,
stuck in mud that devours sweet memories.
Face wrinkled like hillside blasted by wind
of old man huddled on cold cement porch
dissolves into landscape where wood homes sour
in rotten numbness of cracked aching bones.
Old homeless man stares through core of stale Earth
that spins relentless in vast empty void
of wind-battered heart from deep ocean rift
that gapes hungry mouth on moon of my chest.
My heart was gored by sharp bullhorns of grief
when my wife and kids were killed in a car crash,
so I drank to drown my pain, and was fired,
then lost my door key in river of tears.
Each night I sleep on second-story porch
outside dress shop that overlooks town stream
so I can feel fresh breeze from river flow
swirl gusts of air through labyrinth of my brain.
Phantom assigned to this porch by glass light,
I lie paralyzed in dream of contempt,
imprisoned in exile by swan of love
who froze my cold blood with electric shock.
I suffer seizures of abstract horror
when shadows of my fears loom in moonlight
and clutch my arms and legs with ripping claws
that leave no visible scars on torn skin.
I dream entire history of our whole world
each night I never sleep in stifling mist
that shrouds my throbbing corpse in panes of glass
which glitter from giant square towers of wealth.
I pray to God my father said was real,
hoping belief will save me from hot hell,
but I writhe in wretched hell of this flesh,
tormented by anguish for illusory hope.
Nobody answers me in silent night,
and nothing engulfs frail flame of my soul
with shivering raindrops that pierce paper skin
to weave me real with searing threads of light.
I sit hunched all day by glass door of hope
like statue of Buddha, heart froze to stone,
careless whether or not you give me money
because I chew your coins with broken teeth.
I am God who created this weird world,
ancient man with bleary eyes, tangled hair,
and paper skin on bones of fractured glass,
so ignore me because I am half dead.
You exist because I dream you are real,
for entire universe of galaxies
sparkles in tangled neurons of my brain,
and you are nothing but flashes of thought.
Old man hunched by dress shop looks in your eyes
and you see infinite space of all time
spiral outward from abyss of black hole,
so you fly in gushing whirlpool of love.
After he dies, veteran of foreign wars,
frozen to death on Christmas night, ghosts bear
his corpse to meadow where buzzing bees brew
honey in dead rotten tree of his heart.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/11/stephane-mallarme-prophet-of-modernism
ReplyDelete"At the same time, Mallarmé saw Wagner as a threat and a challenge. The all-devouring composer was usurping the poet’s function as the mouthpiece of humanity’s primal myths. And Wagner’s myths were too limiting, too bounded by nationhood. Poets, Mallarmé wrote, must “take back what is ours.” They must sing of heroes with no name—“the Figure that is None” (“la Figure que Nul n’est”). This declaration is close to the ground zero of modernist abstraction."
ReplyDelete