Saturday, January 5, 2013

GASH

 
I indulge in it,
or it indulges in me since
in the silence everything becomes
a bright blend, a lapse where you forget
the stake that distinguishes this from that.
It is like teeth, the grit that I perceive
at night before falling asleep, teeth
cutting into the dark.
They glitter, flash, lash into
the retina of the night.
It can’t be but salt in the end or
its own ghost in a metaphor,
salt that makes Venetian plasters
sooner or later crumble, they paint
and repaint the walls but underneath
the bubbles grow back and transpire,
damp salt mushrooming in its mire.
Or as when my shoes are constrained
to puddle their way onward in the rain,
on a bank of a canal in the dark where
sudden black pools are revealed
in the glimmering arrows of the lamps.
When in the next morning light
on the leather of the damp shoes
a waving line of salt
in its curlicue of froth, mushrooms.
Or the sweat of silence in deep summer
that stings, shines and consumes.
 
That keeps me awake and eventually
accompanies me into sleep.
Sea of a gristle.
Gnawing rhyme.
Life if you like.
The gash we sink in.

1 comment:

Dave King said...

I really enjoyed reading this. Some lines stood out memorably, including:

Or the sweat of silence in deep summer
that stings, shines and consumes.

The images throughout were telling.