amphibi.us

Sitting in the wasteland
on a wooden
stool beneath trees,
wind blowing hard against my whiskered face,
thinking

death-thoughts under night clouds,

I’m aiming myself high,
my
long coat flapping like bird wings,
black crows hanging on branches,
their

eyes closed, leaves slapping them,

no one sleeping out here in
the dry storm,
grass withered around my boots,
sirens in my
memory, a ghost train in the unseen distance,
a ghost city with
broken windows howling some miles away,

all are dead
except
me…

slump shouldered I fall off the stool,
rooting myself
into the ground,
the only way to live in this future,
fingers
poking into earth,

toenails scratching at the inside of my boots,
tongue

lolling out, drying thin,
I unzip my zipper
whispering, singing,
screaming for someone to touch.

© Stephen Jarrell Williams, 2010

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