Waiting for the Worst
I Have Declined To Let the Earth Swallow Me
Young
perhaps she will say
“my brothers hate you”
or
“my mother wants me to take the kids and
move back to Pennsylvania”
or
“your mother called me, she doesn’t
understand
what’s wrong with you”
she says nothing
while
observing me
slowly folding over
the pained movements
of a dying tree
pathetic at her dinner table
where the quiet lies
where the calm kills
where the glasses refuse to sweat
where the meal is without taste
I Have Declined To Let the Earth Swallow Me
in a field
alone
but for the drawing
nearer
of
an
outland,
an
other
an emanation
is
visiting a bloom
through the torn grass
until
stifled by
a cemetery of
fist-sized rocks
it is
as though someone
has pointed
their
flashlight
into the center
of
the universe
all has come
toward the
unfamiliar reflection
unto the thousands
living
in the fall
and spring
with dirt at
the ends of their noses
ways encouraging them
forward
dead without a marker
of stone
nor a greedy master
we
were like
them
once,
remember?
wet
stretching out of your jeans
you thought it was a completion
and i probably didn’t argue it
and I’m sure i made promises
and you believed them
and i believed you
when you showed the many
angles for offer
the heads in the museum
we were disgusted
with
each other
that,
could be only worship
with
the two of us
at different
altars
kissing the alternating
faces
of the
same god
Alexis Marshall has been writing and performing music for two decades. He lives, with his family, on Cape Cod.
