a-voice-in-the-dark

[a-voice-in-the-dark]

In this house are things:

a boy, a lantern,

dead mice, silverware,

running water, screams.

There is filth in this house,

and there is a mop,

and the filth is mop,

and the mop is filth.

And there is me: mop and filth.

This house is a broken Louvre.

In it, I do not have a face,

only a coin ... on the floor ... 

In its shimmer—ghosts pushing me off the roof,

daring me to fly.

And the bedroom?

We sleep when we are dead.

The kitchen?

In this house, we break not bread but stones and promises.

How long have you died here?

My mother lived in this house when I lived in her.

She was many a thing:

a girl, a dark room, scurrying mice,

rust, dripping water, silence,

and at the end, the last spoonful of canned beans.

They collect, dancing on the ceiling, the memories.

They cry, they howl,

they put a bounty out on me.

How do I quell the place that built me?

Set fire to all your bones.

There is no dreaming in this house.

I want to dream that I was old.

***

"All The Stones That Built Me"

- Somto Ihezue

[a-voice-in-the-dark]

Marrow made a wife of Eve

But no one gave up a rib for me and mine

My heart did expose to the elements

Calloused and untouched by a man's design

Oh, my ugly organs

How lucky we are

Brick and mortar between my bones

Built a kingdom fierce and fortified

My name fading from the yellow page

Stones are laid upon the mountainside

Oh, my savage empire

How lucky we are

Never to be moved by the words of a liar

The dark doesn't frighten me

I chose to close my eyes

It is mine, it is mine

The night doesn't frighten me

I chose to let it thrive

It is mine, it is mine

Time has changed the metaphor

Now, dust is not the origin of bone

Little girl, don't let them sell you any armor

All your ribs are still your own

Oh, my precious child

How lucky you are

Handed down a shield for your tender parts

The dark doesn't frighten me

I chose to close my eyes

It is mine, it is mine

The night doesn't frighten me

I chose to let it thrive

It is mine, it is mine

***

"Ribs"

- The Crane Wives

[a-voice-in-the-dark]

Calmly we walk through this April’s day,   

Metropolitan poetry here and there,   

In the park sit pauper and rentier,   

The screaming children, the motor-car   

Fugitive about us, running away,   

Between the worker and the millionaire   

Number provides all distances,   

It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now,   

Many great dears are taken away,   

What will become of you and me

(This is the school in which we learn ...)   

Besides the photo and the memory?

(... that time is the fire in which we burn.)

(This is the school in which we learn ...)   

What is the self amid this blaze?

What am I now that I was then

Which I shall suffer and act again,

The theodicy I wrote in my high school days   

Restored all life from infancy,

The children shouting are bright as they run   

(This is the school in which they learn ...)   

Ravished entirely in their passing play!

(... that time is the fire in which they burn.)

Avid its rush, that reeling blaze!

Where is my father and Eleanor?

Not where are they now, dead seven years,   

But what they were then?

                                     No more? No more?

From Nineteen-Fourteen to the present day,   

Bert Spira and Rhoda consume, consume

Not where they are now (where are they now?)   

But what they were then, both beautiful;

Each minute bursts in the burning room,   

The great globe reels in the solar fire,   

Spinning the trivial and unique away.

(How all things flash! How all things flare!)   

What am I now that I was then?   

May memory restore again and again   

The smallest color of the smallest day:   

Time is the school in which we learn,   

Time is the fire in which we burn.

***

"Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day"

- Delmore Schwartz

[a-voice-in-the-dark]

Mackenzie put a whoopie cushion

on the teacher’s chair.

Makayla told the teacher

that a bug was in her hair.

Alyssa brought an apple

with a purple gummy worm

and gave it to the teacher

just to see if she would squirm.

Elijah left a piece of plastic

dog doo on the floor,

and Vincent put some plastic vomit

in the teacher’s drawer.

Amanda put a goldfish

in the teacher’s drinking glass.

These April Fool’s Day pranks

are ones that you could use in class.

Before you go and try them, though,

there’s something I should mention:

The teacher wasn’t fooling

when she put us in detention.

***

"April Fools Day"

- Ken Nesbitt

(Something silly for April 1st, also happy national poetry month!)

[a-voice-in-the-dark]

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

***

"Ozymandias"

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

[a-voice-in-the-dark]

Have you heard it?

That whisper of noise,

Near silent in sound?

It's buried within you.

Deep, deep down.

Simple in origin,

Saddened in time,

It's innocence, lost,

That voice in the dark.

***

"Did you hear?"

- Voice

[a-voice-in-the-dark]

Oh, it's such a quiet thing,

Hidden in moments left in habit,

A simple thought passed unbidden,

A subtle pause into silence.

It's such a quiet thing,

Beginning on a quiet breath,

A candle snuffed out,

Wanting and wishing for more.

Oh, it's such a quiet thing.

All that is Grief. 

***

"a quiet thing"

- Voice (that's me!)