My Vengeance Tender

Wandering thick soup mist,

Ghost wisps gray and the sun

An imperceptible ball of flame,

That for all its brightness

Does little but keep the gray

From turning to wet obsidian.

I cannot see in this place,

Where hands graze slick

Lichen crusts on rough

Ridges of hickory bark,

And scramble over moss

Like sodden sweaters on gray stones,

Soft earth sucking at my bootheels,

A vacuum through which to trudge.

And poetry is like that, sometimes.

Words to rebrand the ugliness

And shine beauty over it,

Moonlight on a rough sea,

Silvered waves crashing

On warm white sands.

The screaming dark of our insides

So yearning to break out of our minds

And pour back out into our reality,

A fog of jet black disease,

To be lassoed,

And harnessed,

And trained to be something lovely.

There’s a Gaelic heart in my chest,

That sets my fists to rage,

And become a breaker of bones.

It pumps Sicilian blood,

That hones blades like oil and whetstone,

To make of me a carver of flesh.

Through the mind of a boy

Trapped deep in this man

Who fancied himself a knight,

Or a musketeer,

And seeks to throw his gauntlet,

And savage all those ugly blackguards

Who have callously stepped

On the flowers I have known and loved,

And left them crunched and toppled in the mists.

Sisters, lovers, friends,

My mother,

And me.

I too can be ugly.

Ambling through the fog

I’ve done my share of violence,

But I’ve never tramped over flowerbeds.

And I would tear out their livers

For each of you, daily,

An eagle of the gods,

My beak a guthook,

My talons spears,

Promethean fury and vengeance.

Pave the roads of Erebus

With their shattered parts.

But you, bright roses, have your own thorns,

And no need of my barbs,

Though they’re ever there for the asking.

So I will water your roots,

And tend your soil,

And tell you just how pretty you smell,

While I hold you.

All cloud breaks.

All darkness gives to light.

The unseen wilds turn

To birdsong and green forest.

I will hold you,

In the deep dark gloom,

And we will make the ugly things

Into pretty ones,

While we make pretty ones

All our own,

Until it is stark clear day.

And then?

I will hold you still.