Member-only story
IMOGENE’S NOTEBOOK
Walking With the Dead
A poem
Iron sides,
fallen factory lines,
fools gold dims the sun’s mimes
and mimics imprinted footprints as moving time,
but fossils magnify perceptions
becoming present inside themselves,
and all battered oars bleed their own blind spots
before cutting waves into yesterday’s oceans
that seep into man-minded lands
with seashore sand at a glorious price —
you can’t stay without paying the tolls
with small slices of paper mache
and one heart set to boil underneath oblivion.
Soil burns past black
shovels churn in bittersweet toil
as roots dig deep to drink days of life,
and the echos plant seeds that sprout past leaves
that blow with the breeze to appease
a stagnant air that inhales ghosts
who lie firm and maintain the motions —
do we dare to just stop?
and think about sight sideways
or upside down and in between?
or stay with fitted ways,
since ancestors agonized over eyes
sized to see without sway.
Decay breathes
manufactured laws of life
into buildings
that hover in their own structure,
but with a heartbeat
pulsing into malnourished minds,
and built inside dusty black or off-white ideas
encased in frames of the past,
now a monument of precious things
to preserve at a collection of costs —
and that’s where I saw you
beyond melted memory form,
your shape ebbing into dawn
your face looked worn,
a translucent hazard
carrying embers of sacrificed shards,
your eyes tall and torn
from all the things
you could never let go
to hold.
