More These Days

More these days

I lose myself

and find him curled, cracked and coping.

listless

making dreams less,

getting sleep more;

my mind fragile

feigning hoping.

The outdoors;

pitiful shelter. Air waxing cold

waning chills

I hide in coats

but I’m ever coated

in endless waking dreams.

I want to scream

but a man wouldn’t;

it all turns inward

into my shell;

my iron maiden.

deep breaths

I go still.

My friends,

My enemies:

My gods.

How hath we here arrived?

At these windswept days

and cloudfilled nights.

From days apast

I would think us monarchs

rulers of the One; Us.

How can it be

we’ve let fate creep

settle our excitement

into peat on life’s floor.

Is it that onerous tune?

That wretched tick? That final disease:

Time.

Onward, says it.

The rumble of now.

Faint, but esteemed.

It’s the chill in the air

that pierces your coat.

Hidden studiously

the knotted hair the twitching eye

the creaking chair.

Everywhere but now

anywhere but here

my mind wanders.

And I grow older.

And my gods become human.

And I move fatefully on.

#2023