Fall of Stagnancy

Arrange my priorities from trivial to great:

Pine,

Elm,

Birch,

Oak…

Magnolia:

Subdivide the sunbeams

From their highest point at noon.

Find the truth.

Broad daylight has never been so frightening

As all the nation’s crows,

Twenty thousand in all,

Perch on every inch of every branch

Of every tree,

Silently,

Dark darting eyes watching the soil.

Find the truth.

I slip through time,

I slip through twilights.

I examine my defects

One

By

One

(Sometimes in pairs,

For often they come that way)

And salvation is still far,

So far out of reach.

Further still it becomes

As the crows deeply drink

The purest blood of the martyr:

The blood of the one who could never love me back.

What a mess it makes as it spills over the forest floor.

The soil drinks it in,

But still I can’t sleep at night

Knowing that someone

(One of us)

Could have benefited from this.

Too long have I waited

For some carrion bird

To drop some fool’s heart

(A pulsing organ, in the dirt)

At my feet.

Too long have I suffered for it.

So in the wake of my final grievance,

My last self-piteous bout,

Loneliness may torment me no longer.

A stone from my sling

Aimed at the throats of the crows

Will silence them.

One stone will silence them all.

Magnolias will bleed their blossoms,

Burn twenty thousand black feathers that litter the ground,

And destroy the sound

Of their once starving cries,

Their once starving lies.

Shadows will never tell me how to feel.

Subdivide the sunbeams

Before their body sets

And silhouette branches claw at the throat of a western sky.

A victory has taken place this day

On these grounds

On this soil

In these woods

(Though one not of epic proportions).

I have found another piece of myself,

But I have yet to win the heart of the girl.

I only hope you know that I love you.