Free Verse
Mending in 3s.
“The business of words keeps me awake…” ㅤ ~Anne Sexton
Falling soft, at the back of an old daydream forgotten sound of the milkman
whistling, as he often did, while bottles rattled an early day, waking.
I loved his son ㅤonce before war claimed too much of his whole. Lithium and Thorazine taking ㅤa little more.
How well I’ve known the orneriness in truthㅤit rarely sleeps (wasn’t meant to) learned quieted hungers hingeㅤstubbornly upon this heartㅤ like parables.
I eat the day ㅤbefore it’s sunlight mending… always mending. Sit to write ㅤ as the world burns, somewhere ear tilted to nearest birdsong. ㅤ
1
Sweet. Tainted. Blue satin wrapped jezebel slips tiptoe thru neglected courtyard.
Gripping tight to a child’s tattered dimestore purse stitched whole now, in gold. She’ll climb silent ㅤ ghost thru a cracked window peau de soie pumps off ㅤ feet feeling familiar floor findㅤthen kiss the small round face of love – the only gold that can stitch her ㅤwhole.
2 Screechㅤrattle ㅤmetal clanks to metal. Square columned & coated sterile white tileㅤtunnels alternate cement’s dank grays ㅤsubway lit a harsh staggered fluorescence. Pockets of hastening life mingling damp air assaulted senses, eddying in our passage.
Above ground, raised platforms thinㅤflat, skeletonized trails follow a city’s clatter & whirr. Wood stairsㅤ creak descent under this weary passenger. Modern hieroglyphs gild a darker recess below – its surface scrolledㅤchaos in lived philosophies.
Sheltered there, in long wool drab military trench hung soiled and war’s oversized shroud, a white bearded man face grown crackled with ageㅤ his one hand gimp, pleasured himself with the other.
A cold wrong Monday he sat,ㅤDiogenes opposite a tender me (exposé) on a late trainㅤstuttering, ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ I’m s sorry ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ I’m s s s sorry I’m s s o r r y. ㅤ I think he may have been. . . if just for fleeting innocence.
3 Saturday whimpered, near to sounding the mort as Sunday was about to ignite the corner rumblingㅤbriefly under young men gambling a quick hand of drunk & homeward bound their mischiefㅤlike night soon going ㅤ goingㅤ gone from their eyes. (death, in youth seems so ㅤ impossible) Goddamn assholes, rode a shot ricocheted spun echoing into threadsㅤ snagging stillnessㅤ from off a sunrise blood-red.ㅤMorning rose streaming carmine a mimic of warm life spilling across walkways. A keeningㅤ(I thought I’d heard) only a distant groan ㅤ of an aging bus on Clark Street.
©jef littlejohn 2020