Plastic Bags

 
Those relentless winds swooped you up
right from under my nose.
My grip too weak; the winds too strong.
Like a bad cliche our fingers departed.
You were flapping, snapping and pulling higher
like a discarded plastic bag
barely brushing the surfaces.


I'm in a dull room with a chess board and a loaded gun
this shapeless grim figure before me
always played with a loaded gun.
I couldn't take a pawn, never mind a queen.


You flew over tall church spires with bells
that did not ring anymore.
Floods of people poured out the doors smiling
though not a prayer was heard.
My eyes strain to keep focus.


Check.
He has no eyes to read, but he reads.
This is only a game for him.
This game has only one certainty.
For me it was the equivalent of pushing,
with tongue, at a decaying tooth.
Check.


You've torn through the splits in the sky;
I hone my eyes but cannot see.
I cannot follow anymore though I know I must try.


I take the gun and sense his smile as I press it to my temple.

Bone splits. Check.

I tear from this surface and attempt to rise:
ripping and twisting through the air
scouring the open skies for you, but -

I have no control. I'm crashing
through concrete then driven through soil.
Direct through rock and stone then soil
then rock.

The heat swells around me:
impassifiable,
intolerable.
All I can do is constantly burn
and dwell on your whereabouts
repeating forever where you never fledged
and I'll never follow.


Checkmate.




"We separate like ripples on a blank shore" - Thom Yorke