"junebugs"

"junebugs"
written after a moving day by jake kilroy.

the great turnings of life puncture like bones
twisting in the socket as the noisiest music,
a brittle, beautiful mortar and pestle,
lining up the remnants to be served up
to the starving gods in junkie worship
as they fade and beg and wail and slump.

sniffling like beggars, silhouetted in the gloaming,
they wait for the american wake of a future tense.

so i sat on a cooler as the sun went down, dead tired and beat,
smoothing out the past of a shaky hand with stabbing nerves,
as every poison spilled off the shelves in me, dripping toxic,
until i was slow in the face and my eyes could barely blink,
all while the sky shimmered like a mosaic of stained colors;
broken and smashed by the gods who snorted the powder
of humans weakening and collapsing and finally rebuilding.

ah well,
the porch was quiet,
the house was bare,
and i was speechless.

we'd come to the end,
and i wasn't sure where i'd be
when summer took its last dive.
now with boxes stacked in the car,
a carpet in desperate need of cleaning,
and one lone cigarette that glowed as sinister as the past,
my lungs felt like a smokey lounge at ballroom capacity,
and my mind was a getaway car with slashed brakes
and a trunkful of metaphors already spoiling their rot.

a breeze swooped in and the light of the world died.
our once colorful homestead looked like a dream:
white, immaculate, serene, and as empty as my head.
my tongue was salty and my teeth were sticky,
and i brushed the dust out of my thinning hair.

what years these had been, what a life i'd carved up,
what a masterful play we had penned in a blaze!
this was beauty! this was tragedy! this was glory true!

but all it took was a few junebugs choking on the warm night air
to know what death looked like, and it sure wasn't this.
so i tossed the pack of marlboros in the last of the trash bags
turned off the lights of the house, no longer a home,
and started up the car for the long, windy road ahead.