Bar22do
07-27-2011, 05:07 PM
Infernal Moment, or Saturday Night, March 9, 2002 in Jerusalem
My cheek touches the window;
sweat droplets slide the glass, stop on the sill
and dry. Memory, inlaid with shrapnel -
your head bathed in blood, eyes crusting;
a hand on a severed arm still grasps a shuttered glass,
your flannel sleeve is rolled-up.
Hushed by the blast, Café Moment glows
with a formidable light;
my body halts another that flies
over the bar and hurls us down into
a pulpy, thick mess
no one will really disentangle.
I strive to feel that I'm able to feel
fury, disgust, peace, but I repeatedly fail.
Impassive, cats bask in the sun behind the window.
The leaden pallor gives way to plain white shrouds
about your reassembled limbs. Fast and dreadful,
the earth accepts all and Sunday proceeds, unmoved.
Raw snap-shots of carnage keep jolting me back, but
I don't cower away; feelings dried up, it looks,
at the brink of hebetude.
My cheek touches the window;
sweat droplets slide the glass, stop on the sill
and dry. Memory, inlaid with shrapnel -
your head bathed in blood, eyes crusting;
a hand on a severed arm still grasps a shuttered glass,
your flannel sleeve is rolled-up.
Hushed by the blast, Café Moment glows
with a formidable light;
my body halts another that flies
over the bar and hurls us down into
a pulpy, thick mess
no one will really disentangle.
I strive to feel that I'm able to feel
fury, disgust, peace, but I repeatedly fail.
Impassive, cats bask in the sun behind the window.
The leaden pallor gives way to plain white shrouds
about your reassembled limbs. Fast and dreadful,
the earth accepts all and Sunday proceeds, unmoved.
Raw snap-shots of carnage keep jolting me back, but
I don't cower away; feelings dried up, it looks,
at the brink of hebetude.