USA

manukahas@hotmail.com

NIKKI

i want you to hear you speak once more
however silent your voice may now be
i want to try to find the loveliness
that life has to sell

i sit amidst the ocean’s roar
searching for truth in the depths of the sea
feeling that i’ve outlived my usefulness
sobbing as i yell

the things i should have said before
while i was with you and you were with me
but i whisper words to the emptiness
things i could not tell

you were once someone to adore
but your name now seems like a blasphemy
though you no longer feel any distress
i abide in hell

90 st. mary’s street

i am awakened by the sound of a
specter blindly shrieking in the early
morning darkness to a pantheon of
people who left him far behind in the
pricelessly placid stillness enshrouding
the black empty air outside my window
on st. mary’s street

sleep my newfound lover crept away while
i was lying with my face to the wall
inspecting infertile phantoms which danced
to her sad singing in the early morning
darkness unaware of her quick dressing
and turning of the knob until i
heard her shoe’s soft shuffle scratching solid
slanting sidewalk echoing in the
ebony ether outside my window
on st. mary’s street

i know there are only moments until
garbage trucks are growling and the distant
siren cries like a childish tattletale
exposing crime or death or fire and a
car alarm is barking at the unholy
presence of a drunken spirit drifting
down the now lonely corner of the once
crowded noble pavement outside my window
on st. mary’s street

i’m ensnared in my room like a soul in
a tired body and i entreat the gloom
asking favors from fiery photons piercing
the callous concrete cushion draining the
silent sable vacuum as i swoon from
the wound gangrenously consuming my
once regal but now barely beating heart
i am entombed in my womb with hardwood
floors and a view of four corners making love
outside my window . . .
© All Copyright, Joseph Crow Riley.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.