| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
CROCUS T. Obatala (trkyounger) IT COSTS TOO MUCH Vickie Bowman (Midustouch) HARP STRINGS Guy Kettelhack (GuyBlakeKett)
Night falls
for everyone
and harder for some.
What he almost was
looking forward to was
the brilliant agreeableness
of air that was proclaiming
another new day that once
again began his small murders.
He knew she had him when he
told her he could not live without
her scent, crushed purple blooms,
creamy lotions, crocus and cedarwood
rubbed in almond oil.
And all this before noon.
What if someone brushed
past her and then looked back?
It was enough to drive a man crazy.
He was going crazy.
The legions of the dead,
who gave their all in times of war,
are gathering
beyond the boundaries
of the fading day.
Each one, still bearing wounds
that stole his life away,
waits to greet the new recruits –
who soon will swell their ranks.
They’ll ask the question
Was it worth the sacrifice?
No doves of peace fly over battlefields,
Hope’s rainbow is reflected
in a pool of oil,
while bloody footprints mark
the dying soldier’s trail.
Delicate wires like harp strings
crosshatch open frames of curved wood
brass-latched secretary doors
above the fold-out maple leaf
where I sit now and type:
beyond the latticework
on shelves are photographs,
seen through the mausoleum cage:
a calligraphic scrim that softens and
obscures. Dim dreams –
my brother beams, AIDS-tainted,
in his final year of life –
my mother holds her arm around
my seven-year old shoulders on
a cold day at the beach –
my suited father squints in sun,
unwieldy Karloff eyebrows
shielding him – my college girlfriend
Marcie, golden haired and silver-framed,
eyes querying, suspects I’m gay.
Brief shots of night and day
I paid the movers handsomely
to haul from there to here.
I wonder what my motive is
to keep these deaths so near.
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Poems entered from About Poetry Forum, 2001
