Last updated on November 14, 2023
words by barbara doduk
4.
and
in a blizzard swirl of lights
like a hurricane blowing
around the sticky room
looking into the idiot grins
with eyes wide open
pupils dilated like big rim filled coffee mugs steaming
and
spinning quick then slow
the music garbled
belched a familiar melody my mind wrapped around
like a blanket of
rose thorny wool
steel rubbing me raw
and yet
the sofa was free
soft uncontaminated from fluff
laid about flopped to the side
and upside down
the World seeming somehow just slippery clean
as it devoured ingested
tossed me around the entrails
bloodless and pure
in the bowels of the Eclipse
and
morning always arrived like
an unwelcome hangover
hung over the rail
vomit dripping sour chunks of reality
looking for a bacon
egg and toast
grease breakfast
and
the blue eyed sky stared blank
while the World shit out the last of us
onto the gravel parking lot of life
and the stone rolled
as the burn was on
and the clouds blew me over
while annoying children pointed smirking fingers
and
howling with bitter laughter
at the wasted youth of an unloaded hand gun
wanting for the bullets
to shoot you down
but the stench of it all
was nostril curl and eyes watery bad
after all
the end was always around the corner
waiting for me there
and
as the funeral piled into the silver hatchback
heading back to the banquet
the morning rose into a summer day
and into fall
winter
spring
no conceptual birth
or baby body smearing over the sheets of time
this foetal mistrust of indignity rising
then grew without much thought
and then –
one blah day
in a rush of metal legs
and bone brittle brakes
I stopped
in a crush of bloody messed up
mashed up
smash
it came to a halt
the end was always asking for the lights to green for me
not amber
not red
that Sunday afternoon dinner time arrived
with a Royal guest chair empty
and
in a Columbia hospital mourning
over the sour sweet iron taste
I drank it down
and swam around the morphine pain
and ended all that was the full of me inside
then came to
like sprout from seed
to begin all over again
another me
and I was only then nineteen,