The Alchemy of October

I am barely holding on again; some ledge image

Fingernails and heels gripping, slipping cliché

Grandmother asked me how I slept before breakfast

I said, “Stressed for a year or five.  The tide is high today.”

She talks about slumber and I reiterate I slept fine

The mental tax she talks about seeing the bright side, faith

I said I see not optimism or pessimism, just facts; as for the other

I have none

She says, “As long as you have your faith.  There is a reason.”

I say, “You are not listening to a word I am speaking.  So I will quiet.”

I wonder why people ask if they do not want an answer

Everybody just wants to talk; no one to listen so I write

Hypocrisy crud clumps off my tongue, besmirches the skin like oil sand film

The midnight fires from stolen resources and tyranny’s helm

Old timers early to rise and early to bed, split the night like a broken leg

Done enough walking, set the pillow to the Lord

Young man swallowed death and saw the elixir in the cabinet under the sink

The bank account is a house of mirrors offering on homes a man is unfit to live in

Empty rooms where a family would go and the breaking air tastes like fear or hope

Spouse and children to fill or a reminder of what swans have flown

Lakes so far into the East; I said, “Grandfather save me.  The smoke is thick. I cannot breathe.”

The desert speaks an omen dark, the hawks circle and the oasis is raided

A boy given gold and deemed a savior, questing out to return to his Fatima changed

He stands a man to see her son wave a blade.  The loin cloth discarded, search another sycamore

Crumble another sail, camel, boat, or break-less automobile travel on, Odysseus knows the drill

I see the answer and I do not dare speak the incantation numb or sip the swill

Father asks, “How come you are in such a rush?  It has only been three days since you got the money?”

The decades spin a yarn of apathy in the eyes of women, brothers, and ghosts

Speaking, listening, barter of the nothing and I see how little anyone knows me

Mother she wants me to find love like a coin under a pillow in a home burned to cinders

Metal disks should be easier to find with the sheetrock and shingles as fodder for the garbage men

I could take the gold to spin the slot machine sunset to trade bells for the moon and if not

Another in the rotation as the horizon drinks the hair of the dog bloody Mary

To sever memories in the prestidigitation of alchemy