Pall

I won't talk about faces
I've had quite enough of them.
This is my providence.
So here, I do what I want.

I'll write of a landscape.
The color of dried mud.
It goes on forever, this vista.
That's what makes it barren.
That's what makes it heavy to carry.

Or maybe it's an abstract.
Crafted by clumsy hands.
Wielding churlish colors straight from the tube.
Too lazy and sullen to mix them.
Or maybe they like that ugly purple.
Bruised and stiff, if sore were a shade.
They would, wouldn't they?

Believe me, I remember that coverlet.
Laid upon me, such as it is.
A cheap, thin blanket, lousy with thistle
Smelling of mildew and blood.

It's brutal silence
Tight lipped and cool
It's fixed in stone.
Anything else got buried long ago,
With the dead birds and the goldfish.

The backstage of the carnival is always worse to bear.
Than even the part we see, dizzy and swirling.
Why do they come day after hot day?
Year after year?

I said that I wouldn't.
But it seeps around the edges of things.
Wounds festered through the bandage.
Faces aren't welcome here.
But look, I talked about them anyway.




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