Walkin on Air
Summer is passed and we're not yet saved!
Was it an empty childhood
or maybe just an empty household?
Earthquake tremors of incessant disputes
left a family cadaver shabbily dressed
in wrecked dreams and unintelligible despair;
yet somehow smidgens of pleasure
filtered through at sundry times:
hazy images of spotted deer
sipping sweet water from the park-lake,
shaded by massive oaks and curling clouds
eased the fear of living death as chirping sparrows
accompanied rustling leaves and distant laughter.
Long ago was the time when kind hearts turned to stone:
sleet and frozen embryos decorated the approach to envy's prison,
gusts of hatred and cruelty stabbed love with snappy frostbites
like a rabid dog snarling at one's heals
and reminding me to be warm-blooded is to be vulnerable.
Nagging mothers, nagging wives, drunken husbands and what?
Unruly children, of course, draped in a virgin's shawl
retelling the cheap threadbare stories from their perch,
where they just might have had lesser clusters of free spacetime.
Precariously balancing on the railings of pubescent days' dinghy
Father's salt-spray of mindless barbs, mixed with sun and gales
strengthened by his capricious moods, moored by lines of sobriety
that often snapped in an surplus of Johnny-Barleycorn amber liquid,
we learned to find cover from the deluge of evil
inevitably accompanying paternal Neanderthal IQ
stayed on fleeting sensuality and wishful thinking.
At length I grew tire of building the ruins:
vapid DNA-portions void of propriety reflected in storm-clouds
constantly left one stuck midway in an elevator
with broken intercom and no light!
Unfinished vowels and truncated consonants
were not enough to encourage me: it is taking forever.
The work is never finished: looping shattered hopes,
hopes that eat themselves in spasms of fractal fits
with nothing in their wake, but for the turbulence
created by vanity and disbelief.
Salvation seemed too far off: an alien visitation
perhaps could promise relief, but then again,
would anyone truly listen and believe?
or maybe just an empty household?
Earthquake tremors of incessant disputes
left a family cadaver shabbily dressed
in wrecked dreams and unintelligible despair;
yet somehow smidgens of pleasure
filtered through at sundry times:
hazy images of spotted deer
sipping sweet water from the park-lake,
shaded by massive oaks and curling clouds
eased the fear of living death as chirping sparrows
accompanied rustling leaves and distant laughter.
Long ago was the time when kind hearts turned to stone:
sleet and frozen embryos decorated the approach to envy's prison,
gusts of hatred and cruelty stabbed love with snappy frostbites
like a rabid dog snarling at one's heals
and reminding me to be warm-blooded is to be vulnerable.
Nagging mothers, nagging wives, drunken husbands and what?
Unruly children, of course, draped in a virgin's shawl
retelling the cheap threadbare stories from their perch,
where they just might have had lesser clusters of free spacetime.
Precariously balancing on the railings of pubescent days' dinghy
Father's salt-spray of mindless barbs, mixed with sun and gales
strengthened by his capricious moods, moored by lines of sobriety
that often snapped in an surplus of Johnny-Barleycorn amber liquid,
we learned to find cover from the deluge of evil
inevitably accompanying paternal Neanderthal IQ
stayed on fleeting sensuality and wishful thinking.
At length I grew tire of building the ruins:
vapid DNA-portions void of propriety reflected in storm-clouds
constantly left one stuck midway in an elevator
with broken intercom and no light!
Unfinished vowels and truncated consonants
were not enough to encourage me: it is taking forever.
The work is never finished: looping shattered hopes,
hopes that eat themselves in spasms of fractal fits
with nothing in their wake, but for the turbulence
created by vanity and disbelief.
Salvation seemed too far off: an alien visitation
perhaps could promise relief, but then again,
would anyone truly listen and believe?
Comment On This Poem --- Vote for this poem
Summer is passed and we`re not yet saved!
Summer is passed and we`re not yet saved!
