Circumstances

My eyes shutter closed.
Sirens scream because
what else could they say?

A bomb went off in a bus
just up the street from here,
down from the ice cream shop,

“Whipped Cream.” The kids
and I walked out of it
about an hour before.

No one knows where to sit.
I cook the brisket all night
with the barbecue sauce

until it falls apart. We will
read the news and learn
details like nails and screws
bursting with the blast

that tore through commuters.
I can barely keep awake.
The moment will come when

the moon rises at sunset exactly.
Then we will guess something
and wish we had said nothing.

Silence drinks through a straw
and spits out time like a bad
dream—racing forward but going

nowhere in hamster circles,
hamstrung Achilles reaching
for another sandal under the bed.

The sirens fade. I can’t remember
what I’m writing anymore. My eyes
drift up in their sockets as I sleep.

Memory only repeats itself.
History winds on. The maps
fold over in a different way.

I can’t find the thread to
needle you with. The joke
lost itself, deaf to suggestion.

I have the impression that
this is a good place to end.

Eyes Digital Art ©2016 Michael Dickel

Poetry Month 2016 | Fragments of Michael Dickel

Water Poems (a poem)
Flowstone Time (a poem)
SNR—Hybrid Word Dance
Veiled Lady (a poem)
My Brand Here (Hybrid Flash)
Rosy Morn | Poem | Essay | Photographs
Blue Notes (collage | poem)
The BeZine April 2016 — Celebrating Poetry Month
Circumstances