Destroying My Damned Monument
a poem about dismantling a monument to my sadness
There it is and I’m still sorry
it’s there, on the highest hill
owning everything it sees
of me, Sad, not just
because it’s been there
since we
let ourselves remember, at least. The most.
My monumental monument to what felt like truth
in a dying, lying world.
There on the mountaintop.
There my monument stands.
There my masterpiece sits, it’s
breathtaking and beautiful and
brutal and unbending so
so broken.
Flaws in the foundation.
Feel the hard cracks and sharp brittle stone.
Try not to bleed. It has enough blood.
Feel the little canyons carved by constant watering alone.
My life’s work. My life’s love
since love left mine and I locked the door.
Look at it. There it sits, with the unearned confidence of the end
of everything. Refusing to fall. Towering over all.
Scaring settlers and turning travelers away.
Casting shadows and killing crops and
salting fields. Making lonely real.
My constant companion, it’s seen my world. Sending every kind
Simon away after long, hiding so loving women won't weep.
I moved it myself, earning every insignificant inch. Tearing trenches
all across the country, finding Calgarys from the Graham Ave L to
E Caesar Chavez street, West Texas desert town to
Southern California beach. Scarring valleys and plains
with upturned earth. Now, there it sits. Just look at it, especially in the rain.
Decades of dedication. Three years of nothing but called to carve.
Not picking up the phone for anyone else.
Hurt heart in solid stone in flesh and bone in every bend.
Look at it. Today It Ends.
Feet dragging feet up the hill. Fingers gripping handle.
Knuckles gripped with white. Teeth tight.
Putting down sadness and picking up spite. There
in the air, a spike rises and strikes. Stings and rings through
pills and professionals. Fight is right so give me might.
Hands hard and back buckling. Let it out and in.
Still struggling, still breath burning from black lungs to burnt tongue.
In and out and with the heat. A chip. A crack. A crumble.
I repeat. Hunger turned inward, but you have to eat.
I repeat. Rage turned inward, but the fights in the street.
It or I will come down, my cruel master
piece by piece of a piece of myself
harm is what my monument needs
and I’m not supposed to say
what I deserve. So hands bloody
eyes bloody, heart bloody
stone mixing with dust and making wet clay.
Maybe sometime later maybe some other day,
when I can just be both honest and okay.
I’ll build a house up on that hill,
even invite someone to stay.
