Duffel (Poem)

Into night my gaze flies to meet the One who needs me.

The One who wants me in exchange for a melancholy truth.

That I harbor, punctuated.

Bold.

Eternal.

I spring from it like tomorrow is escapable.

Penance unpaid.

Blight transgression on the wind of escape?

Charmed.

Lulled.

Yes, fussed into lumpy tranquility, I hold back disbelief.

But unconnected.

Relieved that the mess has gone but frightened by consequence.

Of blackness rising into my face.

Even as my gaze flies back up to the One who needs me.

Deflected.

Deaf.

Better to be lukewarm than to have known and left.

Stains lie tattooed: mortal.

Swank in defiance.

The cocktail pressures me to a time when things were simpler.

Straightforward.

Resolved.

Unending and peculiar.

Questioning the chalk line.

Longing to make truth without question.

Distinct in my gauzy excuse for sanctity when hell boils.

Ready.

For my crash.

My end.

Here is where angels lived.

North, south. And east, west; falling to time’s pit shorn short of its readiness.

Bleak and vigorous.

A wad of sanctions keeps the chaste harness of purity, until in tiredness they give way.

To spitfire.

To enchanted nights of murky replenishment; finding no end.

Every day needing more.

Drying when the cap is left off.

Bleeding into the pocket that nurtures.

I’m in the middle again.

An alacritous blighting, my duffle packed.

A necklace braided with teeth on edge.

Shivering in their mold and upon which light will never shine as fully again as it did in purer, more delicate times.

When the world was happy to ignore the beast staring back.

And when time approached with the knowing that one day it would end.

Into night my gaze flies to meet the One who needs me.

I spring from it like tomorrow is escapable.