Sleepers in the Trees

Arms hang like dead branches

from knotted hammocks,

slender fingers

shy at the murmur  

of skeleton winds.

My presence doesn’t wake them.

What binds them so,

the spray of rain?

The fall of heavy footsteps

on wounded ears? 

A discarded cigarette

stifled in the dirt?

Drawn to silence, 

I climb into their nests

and close my eyes. 

I am among the scorch-blackened spires 

drinking the fire of life, 

deep rouge and blistering orange

race my veins like highways

and my eyes are licks of dancing flame

The faces of recycled souls 

molded from clay, or stone, 

or else pressed into sheets of rusty metal, 

prod me with callous inquisition, 

their voices spears of ice.

I am dining with death, I must be, 

and we sup on guilt, on remorse,

on inscrutable sorrow, 

and I am lost to myself,

a shadow in a  rotten husk. 

‘Til I fall from the nest  

and land on a rotted copse 

of cricked twigs and leaves.

Muddy thoughts trickle 

through my head in dark waves.

I catch a fractured breath

and find my feet, sweet reality. 

The sleepers in the trees 

make no move

but the occasional twitch 

of a lank finger,

a manifestation of the damned.