POETRY

The Skull Crack

There’s a fatal skull crack running through the world

I know what it’s like, to suffer from a broken brain, to stumble past the stranger I have become, to stutter like a tongue-tied Moses, to leak images from my memory.

I’m tired of hurting other people to feel alive. I sacrifice my hope, self-exile from the promised land. I huddle under a bridge downtown. The last train rumbles overhead like the wrath of God. Within the thunderstorm of sound, my screams bruise the air.

I’m afraid of the light. Disengaged, I wander the streets, hiding behind different plastic masks, unable to feel, unable to wipe away the pasty smile of silent despair.

I shuffle the cards of fate to find relief from being less than whole, less than human: hiding in the bunker of an abandoned apartment, succumbing to the temptation of garter belts, finding enlightenment in the Shekinah glory of broken crack pipes in dark alleys.

I pass shuttered windows of abandoned stores, the neon lights of strip clubs and porn shops. The lament and mercy of an alto sax drift from a dive bar into the fog of back alleys. A teenage girl loiters underneath a dim streetlight, leans into the open window of a Cadillac.

Sirens rage at a weary and helpless God. He’s witnessed it all before. It’s déjà vu. There’s a fatal skull crack running through the world.