Ordinary Person

By the wayside where brown melts 

into green, canopied by the sky, 

a sobering blue, I stood and waited, 

for whom or what, I don’t know,

the memories or what remained of them 

provoked a fierce, overarching sadness, 

the questions to which I had no answers

lingered like ghosts haunting tenebrous 

corridors, I knelt and prayed

though my faith had turned to stone 

and visions of paradise replete with trees

of life had become echoes of nothingness, 

cars passed me, and their black smoke

stung my eyes, but reflection or 

recollection continued, I saw yesterday 

when I held hope’s glow in my heart, 

I gripped today though my spirit had 

left me and all that remained was 

knowledge without power, the edges

of tomorrow drifted at the corners of 

my mind’s eye, a terrible reckoning 

slicing through saint and sinner alike, 

the nescient and the contemptuous wise

brought to their knees in worship 

or seething rage, unable to trick destiny,

the melancholy which I kissed a hundred

times more than any woman I’d known

stood beside me in both her graceful 

and treacherous form, the former 

a sweet whisper of nostalgia, the latter 

an inundating maelstrom of chaos, 

making me beg, ask my surroundings, 

Why? What’s the point? The ecstasy that

once greeted me in a rushed embrace 

now dissolving in the wind, blending 

with the harsh, grey tarmac, 

life, the sting of a thousand needles 

and death, simply an extension of it, 

augmented by the force of devils and

centaurs, succubi and locusts, 

the fabric of this world peeled with 

rough hands revealing stages of 

fire and nadirs. By the wayside, 

I stood and waited, knelt and prayed, 

beseeching God for salvation, 

trying hard to engender repentance, 

to do away with the madness and sadness

that eats slices of life and heart and soul

until there’s nothing left 

except a predilection for disaster, 

but no one came to answer my 

Whys or What’s the points

and weary of affliction, hoping to find

affection, I tried crying like an actor

in a play, but the only stains 

running down my face were caused by 

the smoke from the cars.