Thursday, July 28, 2016




stain

he was speaking vodka,
a language that I all-too-well 
understood

as I sat on the edge of his bed,
I handed him the joint 
that I had just finished, 
carefully rolling

he lit it and taking a small toke,
he became suddenly 
and uncharacteristically 
serious

“You do know that I’m not life, right?”

it must have been obvious that I had no clue
how to answer that
and so he continued…  

“When I was just a little boy, 
your grandpa (and mine) told me… he said, 

‘Son, you’ll pull time
before you hit twenty’

At nineteen, I did six months”

before he could say another word,
several drunk people filed into the room
and the party took over,
just as if the writer had carefully placed it 
into the script, for dramatic effect

about fifteen years later,
I stood in the yard 
with my father,
one morning

we burned a mattress
in the yard

a mattress with a peculiar red stain
on the top end of it,
right about where a man 
would lay his head down
to sleep

smoke climbed through the 
bare tree branches, 
coating the limbs,
blackening the sun,
giving twisted, 
new meaning 
to the wind

with each searing crackle,
each hot, little iron that launched out
from the flame,
the notion was solidified…
that you would not 
be with us again

that red stain has been 
forever removed,
taken off and away from 
the bad blend of cotton 
and synthetic fiber,
its ugly, lack of aesthetic, 
removed from the eye

we have instead, 
embroidered you, 
into the heart 
in gold-letter, 
on satin

a little redirection,
a simple trick of the firelight
and of the mind

a touch of pre-approved 
manipulation,
vocabulary and memory,
now twisted to suit ourselves
with semblances of sanity 

and yourself, in a new suit… 
one to bring you 
over the threshold of the 
next beginning,
in a dapper style

we have gathered many flowers

you were one,
and we gather more

still, we do so wish 
that you were not so still

we seem to be so much 
more careful now,
with our words

we never had to 
monitor our tongues, before… 
we counted on you,
to always say something deliciously profane,
hysterical, sublime… 
something far more terrible
than we would ever manage (or dare) 
to bring forth from our fearful mouths

you said it all for us,
being our favorite devil, 
you spared no words, 
knowing full well, that your time 
was short

now, it has fallen serious and sullen
and ash settles on us,
stealing the still-warm seat
of smiles

we do our best
to preserve the integrity
of your memory

with all your words, 
so clumsily wrong,
so horribly right

your faults fill volumes, 
all of these now consumed by fire 
and forgetfulness

we will not miss them

we are in fact, 
glad to be free of these,
free from the weight of your awful acuity

your condemnation of this world, 
was felt always, hot upon our necks, 
virtually indecipherable 
from the indiscriminate joy 
that your voice poured out
over our wanting brains

we will not miss the anarchy of your actions,
nor your allegiance to an autocratic indifference

but beneath the 
intolerable heavy,
knowing of nothing else to do… 

we dutifully lift up our eyes
to the coming days
where you 
are not




------

This is dedicated to the happy memories of Jevon Ward.


written by Magus (Kevin Trent Boswell)

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