Aghast

© 2013 David Jasmin-Green

Silt fills the channels between now and then,
and the smoothly flowing waterways
that we used to rely on for connection
are clogged with the flotsam and jetsam of wondrous days
cast aside like cheap sloughed skins.

You replace your tantrum with a smug avoidance
that I find hard to handle.
I come to you and you freeze, bitter and poised
like a praying mantis plotting all possible futures
on the tawdry graph of life.
Casually you punctuate your calender
with empty bottles and disposable wrappers
while I lie here condemned,
repenting my pathological stupidity.

I see you from across the water,
a poisoned lamb bleating piteously
with no shepherd to watch over you.
The sacrament moulders and the blood of our covenant
is spilled by time's furious fingers
hammering out an ugly sacrificial rhythm
on the torturous drum of days.
Your milky eyes examine a pinned specimen, my only remains
drowning in a mighty ocean rapt with spent ardour.
Your shrivelled womb aborts a never-ending effluent
of beached fishes and salty dreams and stillborn lies,
an assortment of also rans that swiftly devour
our collective ill gotten gains.