soporific failing
gus stills
Posts: 367
soporific failing
eats good food,
drinks expensive coffee, the kind that comes in a bag instead of a drum,
drives a car that runs & buys books in hardcover,
pulls the plastic from movie cases that will gather dust after one viewing,
& he feels worthless all the time.
though this feeling is not so much a question of worth,
but perhaps a hope for filling what seems empty.
the last time he went to church he stood and sang with everyone else,
and filed out the door to squint at brightness, but left something behind,
in holy shadows & murky glass windows—barriers to enlightenment,
an opaque faith shimmering with bleak faintness—and he holds the surety of that loss,
the knowing that even if he turned, walked back to inconstant clarity,
the time he’d spend would fade again at that threshold, that rending of dark and light,
that fallen angel of a door.
though this image of an angel is not so much an image of beauty,
but perhaps a turning of a page, the corona of a sunflower wilting at the
cracked stoop of a faded sidewalk.
when he showers, he struggles to find the right temperature, & always falls
into his towel with splotched red patches thrown against his back, the failing to turn,
& once, drunk, he collapsed into the corner, waking shivering and blue, & when at last
he gathered himself to turn off the water, to stand huddle in a towel, to open the door
& squint into a mirror marked by rivulets of streaks, where the water had fallen into
beads, slipping down, he saw the striking blue of his eyes, & the shadows of blue
falling away from his face like the tug of wind of crumpled brown leaves on a dying tree.
though this breath against leaves is not so much the sound of time,
but perhaps an ascension at the moment when the wind succeeds,
a tumbling like the unwinding of a spool of film to an empty room,
crackling into tired slaps.
as a child once he wandered through a meadow, filling mostly with long, drooping grass
& little pockets of yellow poppies, & a little stream that never seemed to die out, & it was
idyllic but lacking, now, reaching back at this picturesque lake of water that is his
memory, spilling over the edges of rocky beaches in the thinness of mountain air, lacking
because it will never happen again & therefore always contribute to his sadness. but when
he wanders that little plain of remembered grace, it is as
though this instant, long ago, could still shed the breath of its passing, not so much in
words & forgotten choruses of songs, but perhaps as the closing of eyes as one yawns,
drawing in & closing at once, like a tree serene & lucid in the sudden aura of lightning
before falling to earth with the lightness of death.
eats good food,
drinks expensive coffee, the kind that comes in a bag instead of a drum,
drives a car that runs & buys books in hardcover,
pulls the plastic from movie cases that will gather dust after one viewing,
& he feels worthless all the time.
though this feeling is not so much a question of worth,
but perhaps a hope for filling what seems empty.
the last time he went to church he stood and sang with everyone else,
and filed out the door to squint at brightness, but left something behind,
in holy shadows & murky glass windows—barriers to enlightenment,
an opaque faith shimmering with bleak faintness—and he holds the surety of that loss,
the knowing that even if he turned, walked back to inconstant clarity,
the time he’d spend would fade again at that threshold, that rending of dark and light,
that fallen angel of a door.
though this image of an angel is not so much an image of beauty,
but perhaps a turning of a page, the corona of a sunflower wilting at the
cracked stoop of a faded sidewalk.
when he showers, he struggles to find the right temperature, & always falls
into his towel with splotched red patches thrown against his back, the failing to turn,
& once, drunk, he collapsed into the corner, waking shivering and blue, & when at last
he gathered himself to turn off the water, to stand huddle in a towel, to open the door
& squint into a mirror marked by rivulets of streaks, where the water had fallen into
beads, slipping down, he saw the striking blue of his eyes, & the shadows of blue
falling away from his face like the tug of wind of crumpled brown leaves on a dying tree.
though this breath against leaves is not so much the sound of time,
but perhaps an ascension at the moment when the wind succeeds,
a tumbling like the unwinding of a spool of film to an empty room,
crackling into tired slaps.
as a child once he wandered through a meadow, filling mostly with long, drooping grass
& little pockets of yellow poppies, & a little stream that never seemed to die out, & it was
idyllic but lacking, now, reaching back at this picturesque lake of water that is his
memory, spilling over the edges of rocky beaches in the thinness of mountain air, lacking
because it will never happen again & therefore always contribute to his sadness. but when
he wanders that little plain of remembered grace, it is as
though this instant, long ago, could still shed the breath of its passing, not so much in
words & forgotten choruses of songs, but perhaps as the closing of eyes as one yawns,
drawing in & closing at once, like a tree serene & lucid in the sudden aura of lightning
before falling to earth with the lightness of death.
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death and sleep have often been linked in literature. good work, gus
As she slams the door in his drunken face
And now he stands outside
And all the neighbours start to gossip and drool
He cries oh, girl you must be mad,
What happened to the sweet love you and me had?
Against the door he leans and starts a scene,
And his tears fall and burn the garden green