Toward the Hollow

 Brought to the point of blessed numbness

and beyond that, to this land of hollow eyes

and slackness of the jaw, of having no thoughts

remaining, no words to say to the passing stranger

upon the street, the impasse of the imbecile whose

very glance causes the sensible to flee, to avoid

that strange company of the hollow and wind-ravaged

Ravaged as plains before the constant wind, of our

own company, we find we must condemn it as strange and

flee, finding more sensible climes and causes, but each glance

put the very lie to it, and we damn ourselves as imbeciles,

this impasse of existing upon the same street every day,

the stranger in the garden, never passing but loitering,

thinking not of the words that may fall from the jaw of the

wise, but only seeking the slack time between events, eyes

turned toward the hollow of a rotting tire in the ditch,

numb, blessed points of a rusted fender brought to stillness

at last

These long and lasting stiffnesses, ramshackle guitars with

rusted frets and pointed, hollow tone upon the turn of every

phrase, the events ill-attended and the few in the crowd slack

and seeking only the cheap beer of a workman's night, never

questioning the sad wisdom of the fall, the words without thought,

uttered by the loitering stranger every day, from the hot and

pungent side of the same street we always seem to return to,

we imbeciles, damned by the lie and the glance in the

mirror that reveals that all sense has been lost,

the climes condemned, our company bereft of charm as

the wind's inconstant bellow aches

across the ravaged plain.

Patrick M. Tracy

5/18/17