Now, who is responsible
for taking me to this place,
methodically filling this space,
with troubled words
that hide in binding.

Bested, confined outside,
useless air filling the
void between pages, a Christ-like
death shroud over each,
preserved by plastic not cloth,
but blood stained all the same.
This defective vessel limping
from port to port,
heart to heart,
with no safe haven in sight.
Sail and mast lying dead
in a puddle of human worthlessness,
hopes and dreams slashed.
Suicidal tendencies redundant.
White and back and blue
out and in, titles
screaming, streaming
through bylines,
traveling to demise,
drowned in what’s meaningless.

A poet,
godlessly roaming,
a stranger to your pulpit. Trapped on a
jagged Ferris Wheel between sickness and
false salvation,
a damaged ship and its last
life boat sinking,
vision of which is blotted out by the tired sun.
A romantic sunset with a ghost beside me,
waves rushing to say goodbye
to he who wrote about them.
No, not carried away
but awakened.

In the distance a painted bridge reminds
me of the plummet and the
equally lifeless man
who lives there,
its iron obstructing the red moon. Partially
unchained as it readies itself for sleep,
the moon descends like the ship,
captured by the grief stricken waves.

And the phoenix, born of my campfire
and returned to ash with no hope,
has no repentance for
handing me another unfocused mess
to haunt with
visions of where I’ve been.

07/16/2001

Posted on 07/23/2005
Copyright © 2024 Alex Chambers