Holding On
By Richard O. Moore
1.
How account
for dimming
of the lights
baggage
of old age
tagged and waiting?
or light tricks
in snow
at sun-up?
waiting in line
waiting in line
come sundown
watching the horizon
eyes glowing.
2.
Who
not the
other myself
my prisoner
night flesh
ear-skewered
music
in natural
air
screams well-deep
seep to the brain-root
days
Treblinka nights
guilt
guts the ferret
in my cage
sanity puddles the floor.
3.
In memory sickness
eyes unlace
open
as last night’s boots
a glacier of light
saps the air
remember
the torturer’s
tinnitus
starts the day.
4.
The irrationality
of it
mob noise
angels struck
from the block
of darkness
a sunlit sky breaks
through in shrapnel
hard screaming night
feather touch
troops improvising
for the kill
panic
my enemy
my nail-hold.
5.
Of the texture
of elbows shattered
and stairwell falls
hallucinations
of confession
rush to stop pain.
6.
Andean snow-stats
blind me
the flashlight
of the Burglar
of Death flares
and holds
on my eyes.
7.
In the Feast Halls
ghosts linger
feeding
avoiding
dogs
and the memory
of cracked bones.
8.
Present danger
colors hiss
from a blue masque
bone-bonded
Autumn in no
year’s season
a nerve twitches
across the path.
9.
Planets by lamplight
street laughter
embraced in being
parallel lines
collapse curbside
cornices fall
from a stranger’s dream
moon-sand ears
the inhabitants
lean in to hear.
