Tonight I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. I’m going to write a poem on my blog. This poem is mostly free-thought; I have a habit of revising until what I’ve originally penned and what actually emerges are totally different things. I don’t want to do that tonight. Tonight I’m just going to be me: dark, depressing, and (mostly) unedited.
“Walls”
It somehow seems base that I
would put pen to paper on a topic so abused
as walls.
You’d think they would all be smashed by now,
little more than gravel on sun-starved earth
from the incessant didactic discourse
of every lame-ass poet before me.
But here they are towering in my mind, in my life, in
my soul.
Covered in thorned vines; dark, grey, lifeless,
the walls I put up of morter and clay,
bitter blood and failed fantasies.
And the walls of those close to me,
equally high and intimidating.
After a while I just stare and stare,
my fingernails cracked open, flesh red and raw from
stretching, scrabbling, clawing toward understanding.
In the end,
all I can see are two people, panting,
listening to the endless echoes of their screams
as they try to break free. Hoping, dreaming
of the day when a torrid howl from the one
they care about will leak through the barrier…
even if but a hint of a whisper.
-Russ Legear, May 2008
