MIND THAT CHILD
A tapenade of tarmac furls out before my feet, feel the concrete, cold to toes. Who knows, maybe the fallen children of trees can feel it too: Their ripe, old, majestic golds, earthy oranges, fiery reds.
Dead.
Left on the sidewalk, plaguing the pavements, the scattered ashes of a leafy life-form, dormant. For now. A gust with teeth, a sword unsheathed, jack-knifes into the balmy hues - the horn heralding the coming of autumn.
A timeless tinkle, a wink from my past, when my two petite feet could not scurry too fast. The hardest iron of ironies...
Now.
Charon is seated behind a brittle screen, navigating the oceans of a street uncleaned. Sailing onwards, beating through the wind. I've sinned. Don't take me mistakenly. You are never too grown to grovel, but afore I sink to knees, forced by mind's breeze, my eyes gibe.
To a mascot, powder-pink whirlpool nested in a lone cone. Chiming louder, haven't found her.
The girl.
She'll make it make sense, bring me back to whence I came from: The stencil of society. With piety, step one, step two, is what I do, step three, it's me, it's where I be.
Pavements part like the Red Sea, at deft swipe of hand, to the borders they lean. Between, is me - I don't pick sides. Open wide my arms, my wingspan feather-fingered. Take me to the place where angels linger.
For that is what the weak seek.
Accepted.
My fate on a plate, I've duly scraped. Time to end where I begun, the clock strikes one. But as the white ship nears, bow slicing warring wake. For my own sake I realize. With my own eyes, I see wheeled heels, scratched paint on metal, an engine reels, a silent movie's tape, its story seeps into dreamless sleeps of filmographers.
No ferry of the dead crosses River Styx. Fix my dysfunctional preconceptions - A human man with human hands and human breath.
His name is Seth.
Twin silver chevrons = an ornamental nose, the purring rose. "Take me," I said. I've bled for too long. Let my memories spurt from red poppies blooming from skull. Let them stream into gutters, a puddle of past gone by. Do I care?
No. Why? Sigh.
The mass of motor rolls to a stop, brakes they screech, the doors unlock. A hand lined with age, marked with life, come in contact with yesteryear's knife. He opens palm, I read the psalm, a wrinkled epitaph etched with harm. His fingers splay, arms cradle, take me away. He lays me to rest in the boot of his van, awake, eyes wide. The angelic-white hearse carried me to the other side...
Mind me.
Notes
- This poem is probably my hardest to figure out yet, so read it a few times if you're confused. Just to clear up, the ending is ambiguous, the boy could have died or lived, depends how you interpret it :)
On a lighter note, check out 'Shake Your Chin'.
And if your a male sufferer of an ED, find help and support on Men Get Eating Disorders Too
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