Untitled, a lament

And now,    
   
Tai chi under a leaky roof, and step    
And serenity,    
And step,    
And worry    
Pours in, too    
Curly cue worm trails    
Through my gut    
   
And now breathes its light    
Fire into this aged    
Flesh, its pores are portico    
Eyes,    
Its mouths are slattern    
Fingers    
And its heartache joys    
Flower in the midst of its living    
Contradictions    
Of choice and circumstance    
I largely brought upon myself    
   
And the streets are dry tongues    
And stray cats’ eyes crusted    
Closed or silver blind    
And my helplessness against    
This ubiquitous pestilence    
Sticks in my throat    
   
And the family photo album    
I find    
Discarded    
By the wayside    
Says more than a mouthful    
About the things we can shoulder    
And all that remains    
Within my strident breast    
With each step    
   
Forward. Onward.    
For our fragile days are fleet of    
Foot, winged    
Of heel,    
Blind of oblivion    
   
My loves, my ghosts of never    
Was could have    
Beens, and all those gazing    
Paramours, whose ache    
Is mine,    
In reciprocal current,    
In parallel dimension,    
In wild, unspoken hope,    
Sunlight on your upturned face    
Hands waving from the threadbare    
Tatters of memory    
   
Fires on every horizon,    
Fires on every breath.    
   
And, now    
   
I am howling corridor and flash paper    
Thin, bog and frayed labyrinthian,    
Shattered idol feet, poised atop    
Sand blasted monolith,    
Heartburn pill bottle hollow    
Points, ceiling’s sagging paunch,    
Sick with phantoms,    
Dagger shame gaze, invisible    
Ink    
   
And all along the knucklebone abacus    
I knock back the cowardice    
And disregard the courage,    
The missteps and not the dog eared    
Rises, whose quantum ticks of    
Isolitude I passed holding palm    
Against palm with a rust patina    
Morning    
   
Night, fecund dearth, airy sentinels
Hovering with the bemused smiles
Of prescient angels,    
Above    
   
Checkerboard madness pawns just a
Fingers breadth,    
Below,    
Sleeping in the shadows of    
Embers,    
I dared not risk embrace    
   
Until I am posted up in peeling    
Tarpaulin, in rain misted    
Decay,    
Amidst that forgotten rogues    
Gallery    
   
Until I am sheen and shadow,    
Syllables of liquid light    
   
..  
   
Untitled, a lament    
By    
Daniel Christensen