James Friedman
When an unsung song, churns in tatters in my heart, turning chatter from the world into matters that my art must try to spin into a language broken parts can understand through anguished relations and hands we used to have in hand, that continue to grow apart within our life and over land, left a plan unmade, take the knife off your hands, it’s ok to eat his dinner don’t ignore your appetite, panning through new halls passing each day in strife, take a brother and a brother and a marriage gone grey, covered beneath lies and buried under different graves, before or after afternoon, we’d still languish in the day, try and tell ourselves who’d all been through it, that there was just no other way, than a spiral and a virus and a war the worst thing was when our trust washed away with the dust in the Spring rain.
Love lost or love had, unrenewed from those sad small hands upon his where a dove had once sat in the awning after dawning the sun fixed in the sky, the sons at the table, parents fighting to die, the bedroom, please, don’t you go dare inside, these walls once sturdy have since fallen in decline, just stay behind me, ignore the fire in the air, I don’t want you to grow any more hollow, you’ve already yelled your fair share. If I had told you back then would you have found me so scared, so pathetic that I found our home next to nightmares, would you learn to cry with me since he never showed us how, would denial drive a bargain in fleeing the hurt in every shout, but handle my words now, I know that we’re run down, I write so one day we won’t have to run out, from a brother to a brother of a mother’s same blood, if we had spoken more would this still be where we end up? I once held an umbrella just to hide away the sun, yet now it’s the eclipse that I hide my eyes from. Such is it that I knew us best after it was done. Maybe when we have them, we’ll know what it means, sons.