REGRET--WHY
In the darkest portion of my soul is a window pane
where only a skeletal bone scrapes the unlit glass.
The scree noise of the ever present, but sometimes silent
thing,
brings back howling haunts of memory that never flee,
experienced life never tracked back behind me.
It taps and runs, this bony finger, on the glass.
The many fearsome long drawn out fights to escape
from the too short day to the longer night
growing a’lays darker with the fading of the light.
While the mind wanders in the midst of sleepless obscurity.
Every tap, every scrape sound triggers memory
of every blow ever struck, every piercing given by the hand
of me.
Experiences with their fearsome memory, warming, comfort me,
blanket my soul for having stood alone, a human being.
Living again in the silent spaces, save the scraping noise
in my mind.
Bracing for the assault memories that once were walled,
blocked,
that come rushing in torrents of destruction trying to flood
me with ruin of regret
to find the times for all that might have been, could have
been but went unseen.
Hold back, hold back a while more says I, I fought, I warred
against the many layered hatreds lying wait deep inside of
me.
For what cause do I fall into the room where in me is the
evil,
the putrid smell of deadly gloom. No good can come of it,
no worthy effort shall ever arise as I remember, every drunk
long punched out cry calling from the wasted year gone bye.
I will no regret; for times and days turned to nights,
for blood spilled or men killed not slain by my hand
but my words which struck out in ferocity with deadly
accuracy.
Aye there is the pen and then the sword
but first of all comes the thought, then the words.
Making the killing so much easier in the feral night.
What does it mean, this place of hatreds inside of me?
Nothing except I am still a living normal human being.
© M Durfee
1.10.2016
