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The dagger-toothed moon had scavenged the sun and play-tired hungry children who I confused for ghosts traipsed towards obscure shadows. Distant voices were contours of the solemn skies as a nameless bird pecked a low-spirited star. The whispering leaves of the Dongoyaro tree refracted the purple-riddled moon, time rushed to the edge of a dream, as I sat gazing at the ground.
I wasn’t buried in oneiric distant shores, manacled to the fragments of lost hopes. Not drab like dead Sunday shoes in the wilderness of a deserted home. Not dream-souled in a ritual of scorpion-tailed Blues. Not beer-in-hand, love vanquished, strolling on a heart-canopied path to oblivion. Not castigated by the gossiping night’s breeze cuddling tomorrow’s flaying gun. All I did was gaze at the cast of nothing on the ground.
You wouldn’t have found me crystallized in the dialectic of exploding tranquil astral sadnesses, woolgathering beauty from fallen stars. Nor head-staggering in the fifth circle of hell. Nor buried alive sitting, eyes pledged dolefully to beneath the grave. Nor contemplating suicide. Nor pondering on this poem to write. I only sat, gazing at the ground.
Believe me, it was not a breakdown. No bedevilling whispers descended on me like a cloud of death. Not like the songbird who lost its nest to the barren branch scourged by the storm. Not contemplating, ‘where the bastard is God?’ Not living. Not dead. I only sat, rain-eyed, gazing at the absolute nothing on the ground.
Twitter: @foxypiano
