The Bars

Long held dreams

like fading light

slip out of reach

to places unknown.

Gradual acceptance

of the ugly truths

that they refused to teach.

Meursault’s silent mind

after his time up upon the beach.

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The bars are tight and rusting,

the smell of rot pervading,

thin metal between these laying bodies

and their dissolving memories of free freedom —

taken for granted, and now lusted after —

between this concrete and the fading, fleeing peace of a field.

Long grass

through which wind whispers

only the sweetest nothings.

Calendars outdated,

years tainted and forgotten,

a Groundhog Day schedule.

Bodies break, turn rotten.

Visits turn infrequent,

memories of faces

lose familiarity,

no longer have clarity,

eye colours and the feel of

scratchy stubble

fade away with the tide,

entire lives

evacuating numbed minds.

I wake up and remember to forget again,

blocking peace is easier

than pursuing its elusive shadow,

taunting,

like the freakish, leathered face of the moon

peering wide eyes between the bars

judgemental and intimidating,

my tired mind haunted

by a past eschewed

for what, exactly?

That memory gone, too,

a life lost and inconsequential

even if the feelings remain daunting,

they are otherwise unnoticed

masked by the neat camouflage

of a poor man’s body.

Rust gathers upon my metal frame,

drips down,

re-collects itself.

A gorgeous orange splatter

where freedom once lived

where it once thrived

but now lies dormant

or dead,

orange blooded

and untouched.