To See the Day

An Excerpted Poem from my coming collection, "Songs of the East"

The heat of vanished suns is summoned by
the spark lit by human hand
yesterday. 

Two black shadows, like fallen towers
are cast into the night
by spark’s son.

They stare past each other, past cold eyes
seen much by the other
before now.

Behind them the wind flaps through a tent
over two empty beds
and a stove.

One asks the other in rasping voice,
“How long we gonna set
here and stare?”

The other says in a hollow tone,
“Until you lay down in
that fire there.”

The rasper spits and darkens the dirt,
dip the darkener of
damp dour mud.

He’s wearing a brown hat stained by sweat,
which would shade from the sun
but it’s night.

“Why do you think Jesus put us here?
instead of sending us
on ahead?”

“Unlike the others we ain’t dead and
we’re nowhere closer to 
dying now.”

The hollow man was missing a leg,
his irises were flat
like a pool.
“No, that ain’t it I perhaps reckon.”
the rasper said turning
an eye up.

“What you reckon don’t matter a spit.”
said hollow legless beard
wearing man.

The rasper shook his head and grabbed his
hat to show locks of dark
curly blond.

“I think you know something and you ain’t
telling cause you forgot
how to tell.”

The hollow legless bearded balding
man with iris-pools
met the eye.

“I think you’re the reason we’re set here
just before dawn and it
never comes.”

The rasper spat again and the ground
got a bit dip darker
than before.

“No you can’t tell nothing even if
you wanted to tell the
whole wide world.”

“I hate you. I always hated you.
from the day I was born
I hate you.”

“There ain’t no ‘you’ to hate me no more,
if there ever was from
the damn start–

You’re the face of a scarecrow twisted
by wind and you ain’t no
man to hate.

You’re the salt pillar beneath your waves,
the sandcastle on your beach;
melting ice.

You weren’t no man to hate me, no sir.
You were an avalanche
of dead souls–

You were the damndest act of God like
a twister or a flood
and no more.

You hollow man who made yourself a
hollow man to call up
enough force–

Enough stuff singing down a mountain
to move me out my woods
and my fields–

You were a mass of men more dead than
niggers stink to high hell
or a fly–

And I know you can’t say a damned thing
save cursing and vexes
to a man.

Your end ain’t your beginning cause you
never had a start we
did different.

We is. You ain’t. But the big pile of
proverbial shit that
sits heavy–

No that won’t be cleared in a day or two
or six months or a year.
But I’ll rise.

You won’t.” The hollow man faded out
into the shadow that
wasn’t his.

The sun broke and the rasper set to
breaking camp cause the Lord
was waiting.