Nightblind In the Season of Lights
by Joseph Armstead
The lustre of the glittering
jewelry of revelry,
necklace of lights adorning
the tender throat of a hapless
mid-winter's season
of distress and desperation,
dulls as viscous tears
falling unbidden
from her reddened eyes slide
across their liquid pearlescence.
She cannot see
past the welling waters
of her abandonment.
Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Portrait of Crying Girl" by Ingadudkina (Inga Dudkina), dreamstime_14028740.jpg
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Portrait in Urban Debris
by Joseph Armstead
A car horn bleats
and you look up,
seeing only mechanical motion,
no details.
Grinding your teeth,
you look back down:
discarded
chewing gum wrappers,
aluminum beer can
in the gutter
and
fragments
of a broken bottle on the sidewalk,
curved like scimitars,
razor-edged fractures
lying in wait
for unsuspecting,
inattentive
pedestrians
reflecting light,
cosmic photonic jewelry,
from an overcast winter's sky,
and the dried puddle
from the bottle's contents
staining the concrete
like the leaking viscous
fluid
from the rusted oilpan
on the undercarriage
of a crappy old car.
Her voice, all accusation
and raw, tearful hurt,
echoes in the darkness
inside your head,
ricochetting
like a runaway pinball:
"I can't do this anymore."
Dead inside, you wish you could bleed.
Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographc Stock: "Deserted Street" by A1ik (Alexander Kolomietz), dreamstime_4882550.jpg
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The Black Dog Manifesto
by Joseph Armstead
The moon hides behind the thick gray cotton
of winter clouds over the waters
of the stormy Pacific.
The dog sitting on the hillside
knows that, even though it is hidden,
the moon is still there.
It howls...
They want an apology for our pain.
It makes them uncomfortable.
Like acid, it burns holes
in their flimsy armor of complacency.
Our pain.
It is a thief robbing
their lie of pastoral certitude.
It is a stain of discontent.
Seagulls wheel over the Bay,
crying in voices like abandoned
children
while, on the shoreline below,
an eighteen-wheel tractor truck
broken down in the commute lane
of the east thruway towards the bridge
assorted remembered histories
of anonymous lives
timeslide by;
lost in reverie,
intersecting
at the most inopportune places,
don't look/don't listen/don't touch
the lost connections
of wheeled nomads
in transit,
moving on past a frozen
present-tense
tundra primeval,
a wide asphalt expanse
where The Fallen roam.
This is not that famous road less traveled.
This is the infamy of unfocused regret,
the antonym for solace.
This is our pain
and this, our voice,
is the manifesto of an angry hound
howling in the dark.
Seagulls wheel over the Bay,
crying in the brittle voices
of abandoned children,
while the moon above
the highway
waits behind clouds
for an apology.
Again, the lonely dog
on the gloom-shrouded hillside
howls...
Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Night Howl" by Tiscali (Michele Bartolomei), dreamstime_2157458.jpg
