The Convalescence Agonies

It falls upon me, the fever At the frozen heart of summer Crested with sweat, I shiver While the callous sun commits murder Only I know how to feel the cold Alone in repose with the temperature It knows me too, that glacial gloom Entombed with my frigid, wistful shadow Oh, I feel my heart slow The sludge in my veins, the color Of a blighted rose Flighted with snow That misbegotten flower Seeded in spring with blind hope By a longing, lustful gardener This is the way of things: Any season can be cruel The winds may flay me in July The ice of August knows no rule When in mourning’s climes I lie A frost shall set upon This lonely, bitter fool

You heard the gears winding down Observed the sands running out Knew that your chance Would but once come round You gathered your power Your voice rang loud And you were drained dry An empty vessel Spent beneath the sky And you knew you would die That the work would burn you alive No hesitation, no batted eye You said: “To give is all there is in this life” So you were drained dry An empty vessel Spent beneath the sky No one remembers, nobody cried O empty vessel No thanks were required; You awaited no reply

Dread threads of razor wire Weave through the fabric of days And the twilight lamplight’s caustic quiet Scours your mind like a lathe In this district, this weighted precinct Your debts know where your head lays The streets teem with your weaknesses In alleys lurk your worst mistakes You dwell inside your pain Flee, prisoner, flee From those cursed moments’ internment Shed your yoke; quit your burden Run free, run free Seek the speaking winds Where knived peaks benight the trees By their blast be washed clean Hear your howling past fall silent The world is wider than you know Tarry not in the city of sorrow Find where the sprawl runs thin

A fallow shell A wretched geist You summoned this anamnesis Remains of your disgrace Still haunting your doorway That sniveling mockery Recounts your memories Slips inside your guard You sigh and let it bind you In its vacant embrace Entwined, you cannot pass through The past; you cannot leave this place It knows you well Your will enforced A poet’s penitence The lustration you crave In whispers fell Its ravaged voice Recounts with reverence The cold grace of the grave O, how long will you sustain its shame? What weakness locks your grip upon this shade? Remembrance is no virtue When it preserves so much pain So long as you enshrine It, this sorrow cannot die Your patience is no mercy It is pleading for the scythe

Newborn light knifes inside the blinds Silent, pitiless from the east To pierce the dregs of my dream And drain me from the womb of sleep So I rise and set forth to heal My ritual pains come ‘round again No benediction, no reprieve to obtain Tolling the dawn with a tithe, a refrain Another recovery to embody faithfully I am become a landscape of scars A patchwork province of fibrous memories Hardening beneath the hostile stars Whose weight just waits for me to fade For days to lay their fated waste For strengths reclaimed to slip away For flesh to wither in its haste Even decayed, still I aim to heal The mending is agony I flee to my punctured dream Of mindless stillness, of infinite sleep Where no woes rend me And all labors cease In yearning, suffer every downturn patiently I am become a friend to defeat Emeritus wounds, still aching, wait for me My spurned work, still incomplete Such is the body’s offering Its seasons turn, relentless and swift Its pain which teaches nothing No lesson to learn; no wisdom, no gift But the passion of transfiguration With each convalescence I am reborn, I cease to exist