Monday, March 28, 2022

the holy angel of blasphemy, upon arrival

 

not a poem but a

                painting

 

a certain day

 

sunlight, but

frost in the shadows

between houses

 

a man with a gun or a

child left

to drown in the bathtub

 

soft music on the radio

 

and was this the year you

filmed your best friend

raping some drunken, passed-out

teenage girl, or doesn’t that

help narrow it down?

 

was it the year of the last

unjust war or was it

maybe the start of the next one?

 

all of this pain &

laughter becomes a blur

and it’s not a painting but a

photograph i keep in

a forgotten desk drawer

dead white tree rising up from

its own reflection in

the center of a flooded field

 

blue sky

 

endless grace

 

the last of the snow on the

far sides of the hills and

the obvious knowledge that

here was never worth as

much as there

 

the thirty years i spend

waiting for you to reappear

 

the first flowers of spring

filigreed with crystals of ice

 

and powerlines at some point

strung between dull grey

poles, but no buildings

 

no signs of human machinery

 

the hum in my head that

passes for truth

when i close my eyes


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