Just Another October Poem

As the years pass
Piled like deadfall
It seems like more and more
Leaves are cleaved
From these skeletal trees

You’d think they’d stand
Straighter for the loss
But their boughs bow low
Hunched over as if against
Coming winter’s wicked-eyed wind

As if the bad things can be avoided
With a simple crouching down

But even the blue moon shines here
You can’t live small enough to escape all light

There’re shadows, sure,
But they’re shallow
Pools not even ankle-deep
Offering nowhere to hide

Square to circle
Just another place
Triangle to rectangle
Where you don’t fit

And you sit & count the hours
Mouth their names
3:33, 11:11
Prop up the soldiers that make up the platoon
1,440 standing at attention
Arrayed in an elaborate formation of surrender
Not enough for that, not enough for this
Until you have a clock of wastefulness

Talks of making the time
Like it’s just another daytime television casserole
Comprised of ingredients most pantries keep
Cheese & compromise, noodle & loneliness
The sweet ketchup sauce salted with tears
Gritty with burnt brown sugar

You open the notebook
Smear a little blood on the page
Unsurprised to find clots clinging
To the dispatches of before
Some macabre marginalia
Of the inescapable slow burn

The kind of fire you can’t put out

The old, gnarly oak stump soaked in diesel
& left to smoke under that chickenshit sun