Downbeat (p. 9)

Downbeat
brock bernard

On the street near the closed-down book store
there stand the twin trees
who, when seen under cloudless skies of Midwest autumn,
bend towards the brown green patchwork
like mother birds in search of sustenance,

eager branches and limbs rising toward the gelid moon,
spread wide
as earthenworn seraphs stretching sleepy.
My lips are aflame and

the soft smoke of inspiration
dutifully sifts up through the roof of my mouth,
manoeuvring like the legless
throughout a darkened labyrinth,

spawning the nearly obvious notion
that from the beginning,
the first welcoming light that immediately went out –
as my body began to covet moving air –

I was having a nearer death experience
as I breathed it all in
Now I no longer appreciate the tacit pleasure
of leaping from rock
to stone,
with charred predilection toward staying afloat,

lightly alighting on each
stoic grey face
that grimaced at me and those damn kids,

and I go home sixteen years later
to shoot into my arm
selectively objective information –
while the somnolent fog rubs its eyes,

lingering above the ballad-imbued uptight grand, dizzying each
fresh . hatched . one . fourth . note
as they lackadaisically erected gravestones on my ashen eyelids,

the cowards