"Beware this reckoning,"
Glares a spectral pair of eyes.
Blood quickens in frozen veins,
Stricken as though paralyzed.
Leering back from inside
The mirror, a crack which grows
The distance facts drift at one's
Insistence; then slackens, slows.
And crawling over shards,
Wounds are all to show for wants
Slicing black weals of static
Lack of any real response.
The daunting pain of silence
Spawning deranged interviews—
A prison with no orders,
Visions thrown to trinkets' truths.
Worst is when it's within
The first sentence of doom speaks.
Overpowered by black bile,
Loathing and foul wrath it wreaks.
The dreadful sensation
In the head made manifest:
Seizing trips that mark the sick,
Squeezing grip of panic's press.
Heaviness dimly drapes
Every limb, as though submerged
In water's lips; every move
Murmurs, stripped like a soul scourged.
Beneath this awful weight,
Seething, clawing to maintain;
While fearful of this deep hole,
Here the soul can greatly gain.
It's a cage, and no skill
Engaged will, it confounded
Me; but blessed with room to pace,
They dressed patience around me.
Basically life support
Is the grace the dice produced
To hand me a family
Withstanding my sorrow's sluice.
To think they looked at hell
Without blinking, it took more;
More than courage, more than faith,
The surge of strength love looks for.
Looming death, fate diseased;
Assuming the weight of both,
How they faced it despite dread.
They allowed my glacial growth.
They paid for my prices
As I laid, a dying mind,
Withered body torched in hate—
Delivered by a fortune's find.
They believed in a time
When even I am able,
Condoning this path to shed
Loneliness's black label.
It was pure chance to meet
Him, to endure and advance
Past privation and piss-drunk
Starvation's soul sunken stance.
My family props the sky
Up while hammers drop on nails;
And my head has turned up for him,
Ready to earn grace's grails.
Am I a wretch reborn
By a lucky catch? Of course;
Without either my life's in
Doubt, but strife still stalks its source.
His presence builds me up
A pleasant hill to defend,
But misaligned spheres can soon
Find my spirit brought to bend.
We've grown this better sense,
Sown medicines, worked what found
Subsistence, a miracle
System sheer as sculpted sound.
Our one-room made of smoke,
Blunt and bespoke, fleeting home;
In a flash what saves me could
Crash like waves of frothing foam.
I cannot guard, protect,
By forethought or by power,
Against illness, accident,
Killing events' furled flower.
There's much I can't make kneel,
A touch could steal all I care
About. My dear, meekly tread
And scout ahead. Best beware!
Published
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