In All Your Blinding Glory [spoken]
O,
how hard it is to see you
as brightly veneered your face
as quickly as you leach
the color
from the bounteous world around you
make it all like a caul surround you
reinvent it so it's all about you
take it all in to wither inside you
soaking up the pigment
and substance of that which
upon you rest and like oxygen rely
¬but only in silence
¬and only at night
hungrily swallowing
an earth colored sea of evergreening time
a reddened canon of ancient instruction
a golden forest of organic invention
a dark and damp garden of toil and fruition
and all with barely a cold
ashflake flutter
of your cataract-crazy
unblinking
I
O,
those knuckles clenched and
blanched and wrapped round redacted
unholy unwrit
your snickering sketch of bright boneless wit
slender fingers snatch apples in
a walled and blackened orchard
eyes of blindness that only for a symbol cry
mimicking sunshapes
harvesting ruby-stained tearshaped fake faith
to bring to your nest
your maw marred mess
cradling the field's yield under darkening sky
your brood of a feather all coddled together
fed with fatty falsehood and
painted with lye but
O,
nothing will be denied you
the great appreciator
the swift appropriator
the certain abnegator
the terrain-shifting
culture-lifting
renegotiator of histories
and destinies
convening your church of cruel mastery
polishing frustrated weaponry
practicing apostasy of integrity
O—
how very hard it is to see you
as loudly as you claim your space
as brightly veneered your face
as wide as you spread your barbedwire wings
to outline a well-defined shape
empty
but for a centuries-old hunger and hate
hands clenched full
of all you can strip from the giving landscape
your trumpet but an echo
of all those wailing around you
and behind you and below you and
all to the tune
a borrowed warbling hollow
the sneaking of wind dry and low
crawling through cornfield and rice as you go
leaving them bleached salted fallow
bodies and codicils collected
on your windowsills
burning like candles
like skin bone flesh tallow
to illuminate
a shallow
insatiable
vacuous
platinum
soul
____
©Nezua 2009
