It’s a thing without feathers
solidly whole
with Big Mac, chunky bones
not hollow, light, airy and free;
sadness is weighted,
anchored, tethered fast
like Romeo’s leaden soul
gravity is its lover,
they twist, curl
like candy cane stripes
forming a symbiotic prettiness
like a painful-toed ballerina.
Sadness is a thick tapestry –
a molten black velvet
is its macabre backbone
running through veins
dispersing melancholia
as a bubbling Vesuvius,
its escape routes, pathways
clogged with debris
of former happiness.
I thread the needle
choosing depressive hues
of cottoned completion,
sew a collective sadness
into patch-worked,
blanketed night.
Water trickles as tears –
they surge, swell
in swollen eyes;
flooded river banks
reach out watery tendrils
asking to be held.
I mirror its emotional flow…
tidal at its worst
like a ship-wrecked sea.
I cling to buoyant barrels;
clasp to stranded boards
like an unwanted lover
allowing splinters
to form a coarser shell,
transforming into angry,
inflamed, acerbic pantomimes –
twisted mockeries of self.
It’s a spent candle
ebbing in gathering wind
nearing deathly completion;
a poetic justice wavers,
a hypnotic serpent
bending to Nature’s will,
her ardent desires
engulfing tiny sparks
like a boyish match –
its moment of fame
cuttingly short
collecting in bundles
ubiquitously faced,
burnt to depletion.
And yet Nature holds me fast
as a first lover,
strokes my matted locks,
prises moisture from unseeing eyes,
he tilts my head to heaven,
my pupils dilate seeing
universes of stars,
blinking worlds
of infinitesimal probability.
I smile. Acknowledge a power
greater than me.
I soak in verdant freshness,
a vitality that awakens
like an icy face wash.
