Scrawl

Such tired eyes

Stir dreams into the daft man's cries,

As he winnows through the rubbish of a previous life

With the refinement of an albatross scrawled in the skies,

This teacher dressed to distress,

Moving easily in a world of regrets.

This war without end,

Lulling to sleep the virtues of the indolent,

Regretting wines wasted and pried from the hands

Of the half-hearted amorous,

Attacked by birds of boredom

And the screaming things in trenches.

The songs of masked beauties

Respond to the distresses of our widowers,

Their curved bodies blameless in defense of our castles.

Borrowed from an art long thought forsaken,

From books that teach torches to bar gates

On this Bacchanalian hallucination

So enamored by a Medusa that would restore us,

A simple chorus girl took her time

And dragged herself into the forest,

Swaying her limbs in rhythm to the crickets,

Her youthful skin freshly painted by the grasses and the thickets,

Until a creek festival ensnared her and made off with her riches.

Even with the gold diggers still drunk with old sermons,

Taxing the earth with their pitiless fervor,

The best of their wives still bounce on the knees of a trader of corpses,

Their servant's moving awkwardly as they polish graven images,

Listening to the tittering voices just beyond their perspective,

Their ashen faces aglow in the ember's of life's dire confessions