The Spirit is Near

 

Wrapped in personal pity, betrayer sphinx slinks

and eats; it privately shuffles our motivations. 

I like the capability of my eyes, the way they

brighten the woman on the curb by the church. 

She will burst alive in two minutes.  You cannot

believe the wind last night.  The things it sells. 

The sun buffs the surface of technology across

our city of cracks and cataracts, which also

ignores the shoes rubbing my feet from their bones. 

Enter some disease where the woman sells

her tears prior to civilization.  That moment is now

upon the funeral pyre.  In the crumblings and ramblings

of old men seated in tired t-shirts on the stoops

everlasting, they survey remainders of wars over-lived

and fat berries beyond the perimeter ripened

with blood brought back from the dust fields

by the worms underfoot and pregnant. 

We make wine to toast the cross and tender liars.

 

 

 

- -

 

 

 

Evening Entertainment

 

Bleeding and bent, an alibi was one way

to go.  Flesh torn holes charged with separation

anxiety, feeding.  The emissions spiraled out

and up, leaky spirits glad for escape hatches. 

Late at night, awakened in the breaches of context,

we want some sense of place.  The day knocks in; 

there is no hold here, its own stew of rapid fire

urgency.  These papers must be sent and brew

the coffee quickly.  Report before sundown. 

 

Darkness calls in a jolt and still no setting sun

from heaven.  The remote hotel on the edge of town

does not follow, does not keep your silent room

where a woman holds your heart to the light,

her smile lingering.  She insists on a gun, sawed-off

for protection.  The only way there is through the woods,

past your childhood home and a backdoor invincible. 

You receive it.  Hence, your most recent night,

sealed in an envelope on the bedside table, opening. 

 

 

 

                 

 

amy king is a persona vacuum who sometimes gets clogged, sometimes breathes easily.  she doesn't know if there's a bag & where it's located.  maybe she retains nothing.  check the site amyking.org for more.

 

home