Me Horizontally (a triple sestina)

Road to Eden

There’s a road I wake up on. 

It always leads to loss. 

I recognize the road by the faded flowers

that litter the adjacent footpath. 

Today I woke up in a nightmare;

I found myself crossing that road.

The roses were spent; the daisies were dead;

and the footpath was tangled with weeds.

Stumbled alone on that desolate path,

while others phased by in a blur.

My hands, they reached out; my heart

shriveled in; my hope flushed out with a sigh.

I traced my finger on an ashen trail

and painted my face with the black.

Wandering faerie or warrior maiden?

The river reflected deception this day.

Nothing to lose but a last thread of faith

I wandered the pasture of trust.

Now down on my knees, my hands twisting

grass, I coughed up some fibers of fear.

The fibers grew legs; they traveled away –

I watched as they marched out of sight.

Exhausted, I rested my head in my hands,

blending into the dew and the earth and the night.

When morning arrived, I sheltered my eyes

and tightly wrapped up my weak heart.

A fluttering feeling danced on my chest.

An odd scenario played in the sky

as butterflies danced and dipped in the breeze.

Their glittery fibers were painted with care

as if they had been since the dawn of creation.

The roses and daisies were painted as well.

Geometry

It’s a ripe, juicy apple on the tip of your tongue

The way the morning smells when the sun first appears

It’s the bite of fresh cut tears that never hit the ground

The accidental brushing of hands in passing

It’s in the tucking of hair behind nervous ears

In the meeting of lips to cheek in a warm embrace

It’s in the awkward silence of long goodbyes

From the depths within the eyes of new love

It hides in the things unsaid between friends

Lingers upon the moist skin of intertwined bodies

It can’t be summed up with mathematical shapes

It’s warfare, camouflage, the casualties of cause

Tucked into the gain of someone else’s loss

More than a feeling, it’s the fibers of existence

It’s in the ice cream sundae shared with one spoon

Passionate, enduring – it knows no boundaries

Complex to the nth degree, compounded to infinity

It’s the best puppeteer that money can’t buy

A sea of drowning swimmers struggling to shore

It’s much more than can be summed up with letters

A plague, an epidemic – its infection is for life

And when the day is done, it begins all over again

Abraham

Built him into a statue that day

right in the center of town. A monument;

forever memorializing all he encompassed

Regal, a real intellectual; he looked good

in a tie. We visited him often, stroking

the stone of genius or simply to say hi

His eyes were frozen in a warm smile;

that same smile we grew to cherish,

the one that let us know he truly cared

The windows to his soul were dressed

in a tone of sadness, though, like they held

onto our worries with his. Light resonated

from our statue when we did something

pleasing. We couldn’t help but bathe

in that radiance, cleansing ourselves

of our iniquities and basking in the afterglow

Just below his feet rests a bronze plaque

It reads: Here sits the orphan father;

our mentor, our refuge, our friend.

Cherished and valued is the guidance

of such a respectable man. He waited

for us through all seasons, no matter

the weather or storm. An embraceable form,

while set in that stone, his pliable ways

still could nurture. It’s hard to say what

the future holds for our immortalized gem.

Can he stand the test of time forever

while enduring the force of our elements

as they erode and chip away at his armour?

Will we ever tire of probing his gifts?

Would a new day dawn where we’d forget

to stop by, even if only to extend a “hi?”