Bloody Carnation

Cloistered souls of silence
rise up from the remains of their tragedy
   On the tongues of trepidation and turpitude.
Secret slumber interrupted,
  they file beneath the moon,
toe and heel the only staccato sound
  echoing across a blackness poured out as sky.
Puncturing the stars with soundless song;
  prayers of wailing, curses of praise.

We are never finished with the past;
It owns our remembrance...
It has purchased our nights
   With the foreign currency of indignity;
the 30 pieces of silver coins of all our betrayals.

A bloody carnation rises on the branch of two a.m.
  Seeping scarlet on  the escape we seek in opium and dream,
It folds itself into a shriveled fist,
   gone mad with aching for mercy,
shaking its limp rage in the face of darkness,
until petal and fingers fall....

We are never done.
Our laughter is fractured and forever scarred,
Our tears brittle from years of lying
   in the corner of the child’s eye,
breaking off like ice from a cornice
   to run down the soft hill
of a tiny swollen cheek....

We are the perpetual guest at
   the table of our tales telling,
hearing the cadence, the beat, the lyric rise and fall in breathing antidote
   through our cloistered habit of silence;
our chest full with memory, choking on
  the prickles of our purple nights....a bloody carnation; a blooming cactus...
Flower for an hour, thorns for eternity.

The rivers converge on the edge of memory, and
we listen for the sing song lullaby on the wings of the raven’s flight
Ruffling the sheets of our restless night.
We are never done with the past.

Reviews

[Ed Hart]

yes, it's mostly that; but if it weren't for the other, we would have perished long ago...we've come to here; the race is almost run; we see, and find comfort in one another...and you know that...the past? well, movement implies a trail