Stainglass
by Ero Kai
What shape is a scream deafened inside the hollow
What color the mourning terror across the moor
Stainglass surrenders to the dawn & lays across her lap
Her heart withdraws with the echo’s timed collapse
A curtain drawn, a moment of stillness suspires
The shape climbs the parapet and cradles its crave
Sharp tongues pepper and salt the barren air
A whistle, like a hanging weapon, tempts and threats
Still she hunts in her mind for the words that will make
A fondness swallow an abyss
Trauma cannot live by moonlight
The canals are somnolent and still
Inside a candle pulses with the courtship
His empty thrusts, nonetheless devoured by her
Grief-stricken moans. This is sick potion-making,
The only real sorcery available, the serpent of empty
Lust grabbing the tail end of morbid decay &
Ringing an empty promise from the jaws of time.
It is senseless, and yet it will be felt with all the senses.
At last his head drops like a shamed executioner.
It is August in a field of wild grass and the boy charges
Through like a summer wind
His energy is scythe-like, he reaps and sows
Joy and sorrow in the other children with deliberate intent
There was never any father & so he devours & his appetite
Never understands hunger or humility
He climbs onto the golden rocks and looks down on the valley
And his heart sings to create enough destruction to hide his shadow
To hide what he does not know, to hide what he fears
The shape of his mother’s resignation as the sky
Walks the light to bed and blows the candle out.
He has dealt death and he does not know why.
He has set fire to the defeated because he was paid for smoke.
He shamed women because he was curious how long it would last.
He mocked fate like it was an absent father.
As his caresses became more callous than care
His wife’s downturned body reminds him
There is a crease in his confidence and a tattered page
Reveals itself, bookmarked by someone he long forgot
Shining like the sun, it cracks the midnight dark
It fans the stainglass and reveals a moment
A pure tear, the dew of a love wider than time
Waiting, just waiting, oh without you.
He climbs the steps, a pained echo in his heart
Finally he recognizes the tether that has been
His entire being and life a cast silver thread into the dark river
He stoops, he kneels, he comes to his paws on the stone
Looking out his breath comes out like clouds from a tiny god
But there is no earth below, only stone slabs, cold & maternal
They push against him, pleading him to go higher
Was it the only direction home? Seeking a precipice that seemed to disown him?
A rabble gathers below, they motion to him and start to rise
As if from an underworld of his creation, his fears and hatreds
Their voices start to crow and crackle, they thunder & shine
& before they arrive his head falls, as if surrender was divine.
Time herself crosses that field of wild grass
Time and all her sunken regrets, carrying a bouquet
Heavy is the head that wears the crown
Heavier still the hand that picks it back up
Heaviest the grave where nobility is etched
Seasons change, yet she remains still, locked in eternal embrace
With what?
What it is to have, best understood in loss
What it is to lose, best left unsaid
And yet those unspoken words, like memory’s child
Will bury her time into the cool dark ground.
What shape is a scream deafened inside the hollow
What color the mourning terror across the moor
Stainglass surrenders to the dawn & lays across her lap
Her heart withdraws with the echo’s timed collapse
A curtain drawn, a moment of stillness suspires
The shape climbs the parapet and cradles its crave
Sharp tongues pepper and salt the barren air
A whistle, like a hanging weapon, tempts and threats
Still she hunts in her mind for the words that will make
A fondness swallow an abyss
Trauma cannot live by moonlight
The canals are somnolent and still
Inside a candle pulses with the courtship
His empty thrusts, nonetheless devoured by her
Grief-stricken moans. This is sick potion-making,
The only real sorcery available, the serpent of empty
Lust grabbing the tail end of morbid decay &
Ringing an empty promise from the jaws of time.
It is senseless, and yet it will be felt with all the senses.
At last his head drops like a shamed executioner.
It is August in a field of wild grass and the boy charges
Through like a summer wind
His energy is scythe-like, he reaps and sows
Joy and sorrow in the other children with deliberate intent
There was never any father & so he devours & his appetite
Never understands hunger or humility
He climbs onto the golden rocks and looks down on the valley
And his heart sings to create enough destruction to hide his shadow
To hide what he does not know, to hide what he fears
The shape of his mother’s resignation as the sky
Walks the light to bed and blows the candle out.
He has dealt death and he does not know why.
He has set fire to the defeated because he was paid for smoke.
He shamed women because he was curious how long it would last.
He mocked fate like it was an absent father.
As his caresses became more callous than care
His wife’s downturned body reminds him
There is a crease in his confidence and a tattered page
Reveals itself, bookmarked by someone he long forgot
Shining like the sun, it cracks the midnight dark
It fans the stainglass and reveals a moment
A pure tear, the dew of a love wider than time
Waiting, just waiting, oh without you.
He climbs the steps, a pained echo in his heart
Finally he recognizes the tether that has been
His entire being and life a cast silver thread into the dark river
He stoops, he kneels, he comes to his paws on the stone
Looking out his breath comes out like clouds from a tiny god
But there is no earth below, only stone slabs, cold & maternal
They push against him, pleading him to go higher
Was it the only direction home? Seeking a precipice that seemed to disown him?
A rabble gathers below, they motion to him and start to rise
As if from an underworld of his creation, his fears and hatreds
Their voices start to crow and crackle, they thunder & shine
& before they arrive his head falls, as if surrender was divine.
Time herself crosses that field of wild grass
Time and all her sunken regrets, carrying a bouquet
Heavy is the head that wears the crown
Heavier still the hand that picks it back up
Heaviest the grave where nobility is etched
Seasons change, yet she remains still, locked in eternal embrace
With what?
What it is to have, best understood in loss
What it is to lose, best left unsaid
And yet those unspoken words, like memory’s child
Will bury her time into the cool dark ground.
No comments:
Post a Comment