Here we are,
My fellow ashes,
Poured into the bottomed world where we’re once again orange-clad,
Where steel bars and brick walls house their faithful demons,
Looking up at the ceiling that denies the daytime,
Looking down on ourselves for crossing every line.
Our jumpsuit days are hell flipped inside and out,
The seconds fade faster than we can keep count,
Wondering how long we have left on our sentences,
As the will to live is expunged by all our uttered sentences.
Sitting on our spring-ripped mattresses,
Rich with urine stains and cigarette scorches,
We come forward with all our backslides,
To the ones like us who killed the world with slow burns,
Like us,
They’ve been purest of the wicked with each checkered past,
Doing the unwanted from first good man to last,
By speaking our collective languages
“Dozens of bullets to their bloody chests”
“Dividing nations and hearts,
Without cares, without regrets”
Until the languages got so loud,
That we became the memories our sons and daughters longed to forget.
For how long can we do this?
Returning to first loves that brought all of it?
Maybe the evil isn’t every dark day at the back of our minds,
Maybe the evil is that to them, we always rewind.
We rewind to the phone calls unanswered,
To the bars where our non-wives’ virginities became hammered,
And to the pretty words we said,
With voices smooth as silk,
Too many to notice the faces turned red.
Like ashes to ashes,
And dust to dust,
We find our broken way back to these lusts,
And that is how our steps forwardly reverse,
To this giant black pool of a universe.
Where the sight of morning wears thin,
That one hug goodnight, no more again.
Because our repetitions always seem to win,
The nightmares we keep sinking back in.
poetjla 