JUST FOUND IN MY MEMENTO STACK

[schlomo]

One of my Daughter’s Dark Poems Written in High School

76 (Grandfather’s Final Age)

Shadows like ominous dragons of despair

Loom across his sagging face

Skin yellowed and thin,

Hanging as decaying moss on brittle bones jump out at me,

Screaming for a way out of this tomb.

Stale air surrounds him; heavily

And almost hesitantly he sucks it in

Through cracked lips and swollen tongue.

And yet:

I am drawn to his marbled eyes,

The one essence of existing life                                                                

In this desert of death in which he is contained.

Pleading for an escape, they water

And become springs of suppressed emotion;

I see his heart bleeding,

I see his open confusion at his lingering condition—

I see my own fears laughing hysterically through the mirror

Of reality that sits atop of him like a mangled limb.