when love fails to glue every part broken from a fall...

 Train wreck at Montparnasse Station, Paris, France, 1895.

when love fails to glue every part broken from a fall 
(horses and cadavers)


the Sun plays 
outside my window 
I pray for more rain
everywhere it smells 
of death 
of paper rattle poems 
in the steps of schoolchildren 
scuffling their feet 
through dry leaves 
on their way home 
from school


" don't turn away from me, 
you owe me!..."

she exhorted, my back to her
I could hear spittle fly 
from the barely contained 
anger inside the words 
she was choked up 
with barely enough 
muster to mutter...

I no longer cared to mend ways 
I only knew to survive I had to 
keep taking and taking 
not giving a rat's ass

fuck me...?
fuck you 
fuck this 
I mumble to myself 
hands in my pockets 
shoulders tucked, walking away
deliberately singing 
stringing one moment 
to the next
for supper my soul
is an egg 
wrapped in rags 
a quiet shelled self 
in jaunted stilted whispers 
that at first were 
just sounds I heard
as if I were bleeding out
in a warm bath...

words and wishes 
for more cages 
and dishes to break too
flesh and bones 
to complete you
in the heated articulations 
of love's dissipation 
scrolling along 
like movie credits 
you in a seat 
while turned away 
from watching 
how you listen 
to the scent 
of nothing left to give...

"I am from the hell 
you wish to send me to, 
how is it love mistakes fate 
time and time again just to get away from thee, 
whence our eyes gain limbs we surmise and surprise 
and guess we are all lip service chains and balls 
catalogued in someone's fading memory 
this way we station places where our emotions 
went when they become blind to their intentions 
and we found out we had driven too fast, 
while still wishing we had walked 
or rode slow horses..."


EJR ©