The End of Walker Road

For the first time in several months, 

Today, I tasted death.

I killed my mind and, all at once,

My hands remembered what it means,

To vomit forth words. I cannot say I miss the sting,

Of whirling blood clots,

Planted in the midst of my cranium;

My storage unit, holding only tumors and lost things.

My memories have rotted from the inside like pumpkins in the sun-

It feels good to have lived them though.

The Plasticine sky, in her drooping,

Latticed frame, lifts the ground to her open pupil,

Exhaling goodness, in her wake.

The Earth gapes, and I am at one.

My roots dissolve, and, new to freedom,

I outrun my body: disperse into nothing but dust

And a framed picture leaning on a cracked headstone.

Splintered bones,

Burst from flesh sarcophagi,

To dance in the rain and experience,

The wilting reality we call home,

Doomed and infinitely fleeting.

To taste infidelity. To let warm butter,

Roll from bloodied cuticles.

I want to roam the desert,

In the blackest blanket of nightfall.

Speak not my language,

For I remember exactly who I am;

Whom I was meant to be,

But had merely forgotten;

Cracked soles beat the sand below,

Bury my sightless cries in the cool,

Foreign air, and let me vanish all together.

Lips to the moon, I am, at last, ready to be.

Words become my middle,

Take for light, the sky, what together,

We craft so deftly,

In the emptiest of wooden wombs.

Alas, my past refuses to let me fly;

Ensnares my wrist and latches

Onto my smoldering sun,

Serpentine fangs gritting between pilaf skins.

Blighted. Wicked. Ruined.

Clumped in the ashes of my paper family,

I am reduced to soot, again and again.