End this

and the diamond horse it rides

Blow the bridge behind and before it
Bring fire to it where it stands bewildered
between the two

But it has come so far, you plead
Not far enough we respond
and how long must we wait for it
to come the rest of the way it should go

Blow the bridge to the past behind it
that it may not return
Blow the bridge to the present before it
that we may be safe from what it brings us
from that past

End this and its platinum blonde warrior locks
End this and its steel hoofed steed
End this with a song or a sword it does not matter
as long as it ends and ends hard and finally

let it not leave a thing behind it
when it goes
Let the diamond horse
shatter and melt away
Let the rider
fall into the shadows
and be gone

My hands 
began to lose hope 
somewhere around two PM
on a Tuesday. 

On Wednesday I looked
at what they were doing
on my guitar’s strings;
familiar songs,
songs I’d written,
did not sound the same.

I sit with them in my lap
often now: invalid limbs,
kin to my feet
that lately burn and prick 
with the same disease.
They sob out loud 
at times but mostly
fry in silence as we watch 
the world itself
attempting suicide.

Hopeless, failed hands;
stinging, failed soles
of unsteady feet; heat and
drought everywhere and
a tingle within
that whispers both personal
and general doom.

When I tell my hands
there is no easy end to this,
that this is no longer
a crisis, but a state of being,
they flutter up from my lap
and then fall still. 
It is hard for hands like these
to see all that demands to be done.
Hard for feet like these
to see how far there is to go.

As for me: in this body,
nothing is solid. Nothing
stops shaking. My hands
lose their grip. My feet fall out
from under me. I end up, daily,
staring up immobilized
from endangered ground,
ashamed that somehow,
I keep breathing.