Blackbird

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
-T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton"


April 18, 2012

The smell is overwhelming,
As last night's carnage hangs on the bedpost-
A testament to his conquest.

It wasn't the bird's fault, of course.
She wasn't aware she couldn't sing at night,
That singing was for mornings only.

The woman touches her soft feathers,
Sees the vacant look in her eyes.
She wonders if it would have been better,
Simply to imprison her-
But he would never allow that.

Suddenly the room is spinning.
The wings disintegrate between her fingers,
as the sun shines through the glass windowpane.
She's trapped again today.
If escape were an option, what would she choose?

Embers

EMBERS
Katie M. Moss
October 8, 2011

The circle never ends,
It always begins
From a point of no return
From the last place you felt heat.
From the time you felt peace.

Those fires burn dark and smoky,
Stone red and embers crying
For heights they’ll never reach.
For a space they’ll never breach.

Fingers clasp at the nothing
That surrounds you and embodies:
All of us are essence
Slowly drifting and dispelling.
Slowly fighting as we’re fleeting.
Disappearing while we sleep.

A dark hallway shrouds your coming
Where keys no locks will fit
No doors will open for you.
No lights to show the way,
No home for you to reach.

Cobwebs and shadows growing
Surround you ever nearer.
I linger there before you
In places you won’t reach.
…A life that can’t be breached.

I knew you once,
I knew you.
As your shadow,
Oh, how easily I seeped.

Your life you’ll spend forever
In search of those who’ll know you
For hands to clasp in the darkness,
For a cool breath to ease the flames.

Memphis: A Prose Poem

By Katie M. Moss
September 1, 2011

She sits in the corner, there.
A misty fog glazes her down-turned eyes.
A fly buzzes above her unkept hair,
And a smile grazes her parched lips.

She sees me looking now, catches my familiar gaze.
She gives me a hard stare.

I loved her once, in a different time, a different place.

She was better kept then. Her eyes still had the hope of years to come,
Lingering around the not yet wrinkled edges.

Tonight I can’t see the spark of memory in them.
The summer days, floating on that drawling Southern river,
The nights filled with fireflies and moonshine.
Things were simple, then.

She left for Memphis once, a long time ago.
She was gone for two months.
No one ever knew what she did, who she met.
But when she came back, she wasn’t the same.

Sometimes she would hum strange melodies,
A faraway look in her eyes as she stirred the dinners she made for me,
Once I finished in the shipyard.
I liked her best at those times.

She was a different woman then, mysterious even.
Her brows would knit together, and I couldn’t decide if she was trying to remember,
Or if she desperately wanted to forget.

Tonight I can still taste those homemade pies
She filled them with fruits so sweet,
I almost couldn’t bear it.


She’d slowly kiss me after,
The taste lingering on her tongue.
Then we’d slide into the front porch swing.
Our motions swaying in tandem with the wind, the trees.

We’d stay outside until sunrise,
Until I carried her inside.
She clung to me at those times,
In the same way she clings to that dirty, old suitcase now.

I nod at her, a nod of knowing
Of recognition.
She blinks her eyes.
They clear, only for a moment, as if the cobwebs of the present are broken,
And she can live clearly in the world of her past.

She walks over to me,
Steady, determined, stone-faced.
She says, “Funny thing, seeing you on a day like today.”
I shrug. “Life’s funny like that,” I say.

“You going somewhere?”
“Yeah. Thought I’d take the next train. To Memphis.”
She shifts her feet,
Glances down at her scuffed-toe shoes.

She begins to walk away, takes a look back.
“I’m sorry,” she says, “that you never knew me.
That you never knew Memphis.”
I shrug again.
She doesn’t know I’m going there today.

She takes ten determined steps,
Counts them out in a whisper,
Her voice trembling.
“I’m sorry,” she says again,
As she steps onto the tracks.

***************************************
The 10:40 train to Memphis arrived right on time.
She went right along with it, as she hummed a little tune.

(Found @ TerraGalleria.com)