dying

HUMAN BOOKENDS

It is here
in this bottle-necked existence, locked
into days captioned by ticks and tocks
where time resides in each of us
until it stops,
rotating the same hands
inside the same third dimensional clock.

It is here
where every breath exhaled is a universal kiss –
it is simply one moment and
the space in between this
that binds together our journeys, which,
as uniquely defined as we feel each is,
are all chapters of the same book
we write to reminisce,
primed and painted with the same theme we
create to self-exist,
scrawled by the same pencil, held
by the same hands as we persist . . .
each of us artists
with the same precise and leather-bound twist.

It is here
where we long for real purpose or true faith –
to believe that something
‘other’/ external / majestic
awaits . . .
but in nothing we trust
yet, cry blame for our fate –
each a different monologue of the same hate;
the same distracting soul state;
the same periodic and prolific bait.
God would not want us, at any rate

It is here
in darkness, arms around each other’s back
that war hangs overhead in stasis,
circling, cycling on a track and
wearing thin our patience
while it leaks like yolk from all our cracks
(we watch it drip indifferently as we huddle tight within our pack)
S
I
L
E
N
T
L
Y
preparing
for the next surprise attack:
we, like wolves, insane
and seeing red with every flash –
our lonely pain inciting hunger,
our deep abyss as black.

It is here
in this cosmic explosion
and it is now just as it was then,
that peace is nought but a tragic parody
of the dreams of passing men –
and nothing changes but the theatre of stars
in lines, in queues, end to end,
enemy to friend to
ENEMY
for decades once again,
consuming pain like greed as our bellies, full, distend,
living every angle of the lie like it is money we MUST spend,
the broken tales of each of us
portending, true, our end;
dangling one more burden
like a dog-tag for a past we’ve penned,
at rest beneath a headstone
in a yard of human bookends.