poem post #6

60

sustaining rains have come and gone
the world’s gone green again
but, me
I’m black
black and blindly driving
down inhospitable two-lanes

a world away,
black balloons flutter in the Gaza wind
and widows keen like tortured seabirds
mean time
amid the soft glow of the Tel Aviv feast
war birds loft glasses of wine
it’s flash bulbs
and much proud preening

listen
no one’s taking sides here

it’s blood on blood
on all sides now
blood on blood
with blood to come
rivers of the stuff
deep and twisted
cold
and endless as this road I’m now on

black and blindly driving
I close my eyes
love sees the world that way
(someone once said that to me)
I grip the wheel
listening as it croaks for mercy
under the strain of cold and bloodless knuckles
eyelids tight
I mash the gas
gears shift
things changes
and the dead dry snakeskin of my fears
gets sucked through the crack in the window
as the wild wind howls on and on
somewhere
sometime
a long time back
someone once said to me:
love sees the world like this

black and blindly driving
remembering their words
it’s hard not to smile
so
I do

::


© 2009, Curt Alderson. All rights reserved in accordance with the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.