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And iambic legs, crashing,
Flickering in the night, flashing,
Clicking and clunking past your body,
Scraping their naked knees against the warm asphalt;
They go screaming past you in a verbal assault,
The last of the gunslingers they were,
(and so was he)
Vowels punctuated and puncturing,
Blazing forth from sandalwood
Guns, tempered by time,
Polished by the heat of a thousand suns
(or is it sons?)
but you
You just blink and stare
And stare and blink
Into the sun
Into the moon
Searching the silent shadows.
I watch the grass grow around your thin feet,
Wanting to, but never moving.
Your eyes question the horizon,
Where your mind replays his voice
And the way his booted feet once left tracks
On the road, borne away by the dusty winds,
As you stand there torn, with silvered shadow
Waiting for something and nothing the same.
“Wake up, wake up,
And go to sleep,” I shout
But your eyes stare on ahead of me
Because you keep the past
In your pocket and his picture
In a golden locket
Lying against your sunken chest
Where a heart used to be.
Why can’t you see,
That he’s not coming back?
Your legs moving mechanically always
Pacing and pacing and pacing
After his ghost that you’re forever chasing?
Is there still a heart beneath that chest?
77
DeSouza
Creative Scholarship