Infinite Season

The infinite season of my life’s story is learned
like a sofa lesson, worn thin as God’s name.
And over there [pointing] my drinking hangs
on the wall like a crooked family portrait
- perpetually in need of straightening.
It’s not in nature’s peace that I find solitude
but in the hell of my prayers. And in their frail
words I hear the sound of his eternal laughing.

And through the curtains of my dark dark room,
comfort calls through sorrowed panes singing hope,
while other seasons more infinite pass without me.
I call out to him again. His name passing through
my lips leaves the bitterest taste on the tip of my tongue.
And somewhere – somewhere else,
some wheel turns the ing of being.

But here, where I catch fire and die in a pyre
of unearthly screams, I curse my flinty heart,
collect my bones and count them. Lay them out
in neat rows by memory, at last giving life some order.
And once I’m straight, I wait with the desert
for the forgiving rains which never amount to more than a taste.

Is that a fever burning? Or has the cool of me simply been
called away? I don’t need answers to these questions.
I simply quench the appetite of my curiosity with proof.
And soon enough, I have a dull awareness that my portrait

is askew. My flinty heart sparks against my chest.
And I wait for tongues of flame to lick me clean.

by dennis tkon Copyright 2007

A Touch of Death

Certainly you remember death
I recall your wedding day
Bridegroom that you were, adorned in black

Your faceless bride, hollow. Veiled.
The smell of rot
Laughing through cracked yellow teeth
You pledged your love in silence

Six guests danced the pallbearer’s waltz
for you both. It was your song after all.
And was followed by a funeral dirge
Heard by no one

Oh! The honeymoon suite!
That splendid one room chamber
But they forgot to embalm you
So you did it yourself
And spent the next four years perfecting your skill

And when you were good and ripe
You split open spilling loneliness
from your gut until you were drowned
I forget how we marked the passage of time

One hundred and twenty credits I think
was what we needed for that psychology degree
But by then we’d been dead for so long. Remember?

By then you could recall effortlessly what
the business end of a gun felt like in your mouth
The smell of black powder
Thank god for cowardice
You only ever danced with her

Dennis Tkon Copyright 2007