Where the Words Went

Inspiring Artwork: The Storybook by Catrin Welz-Stein

(Catrin has a great Website that provides endless, fantastic surreal browsing experience.)

I scour one after the other
each page
looking for a fingerprint,
a word, a tear,
a sigh(n).

The script
screams
in sudden
emptiness.
Where have all the words gone?

They seemed so important
yet when I had them,
they died on the tip
of my tongue or took
dust moats as sails
brandishing swords
targeting onwards,
drawn to the hum-thrum
of my eardrum.

I swat them away,
keep looking
in the old places,
brittled pages.

Around me, the lost
words break loose,
a deluge –

I am caught in the storm
of invisible droves,
flashing letters,
falling words,
ghost whispers
twisted in a gale.

They strike like rain,
but
my eyes blind and
the fevered search
continues.

The Last Night of the Earth

It is the last night of the earth,
again.
Last year, glaciers melted and the world shrank.
There were Ice Ages and reigns of fire
and more history then.

If it is to end, again,
let it end like any other,
looking in from these
parapet peepholes
at these leaking stone walls
flowing amber curtains
cheap green carpet
gum-gucked furniture

I scrawled my name in blood across this place.

Tonight, I tear it down
brick by brick
ready to build again.


(Red-tinted Caerphilly Castle, Wales, 2008)

Young Medusa

Each raindrop swoops at my face
pecks at the powder, the paint
My skin peels
I reach to hide myself, my fingers frantic
I must mask this stranger’s face.
What passersby must ponder at this crumbling statue:
a remnant of some ancient Other
a mummy unwrapping, a spawn of Hephaestos
Medusa
crying
in the rain.



My apologies for the delay, friends. It's been finals week (proctoring exams and helping 50 freshman not freak out is wonderfully full time work), and I'm taking my prelim exams - 3 8-hour-long tests - eek!- starting next week! I might be posting intermittently this month. .. also, the picture is one I took in Budapest, 2008, a few months before I wrote this poem.