In the Basement of Half-Written Poems

Is it being over the line

to want sufficient taste

of the other side of funhouse

mirrors where survival wasn’t

possible in plans for blank posterity,

or in their house of unreturned eyes,

which soaked up and then spewed

my feathered soul, which lay

dormant in secret alleys

paved with chicken shit?

.

And could it be that I

misunderstood well-wishers

with open containers,

inviting me to fill them with

echoes and sperm and

diary entries, breaking

both sides of love-lost levees

vulnerable to reawakening

fear that grows in

basements of half-written poems?

.

Because it was only half-eaten

apples that rotted and suggested

make believe with the sordid

suffer machines that power, say,

the bodies of Christ and Sisyphus,

while bombs placed in me ignited

my off-targeted cranial vagus

and wasted away futile time

after a newborn killing.

.

Then there are reconciliations

found in city traffic, a wrist on a

frozen pole, or the

slight smell of lavender.

But what happens when

it’s not even enough to suffer,

while God learns how to die?

.

No.

I would rather hope the

belly of muster-seed emotions,

which vines from my bowels,

are tamed by rapid eye movement

and the crafted cross

of a star-crossed family

that un-conditions the zephyrs

of yesterday’s penances

and finally sets me free.