The death of a moon cowboy

I am a somewhat-youth with ideas and thoughts and too many dreams that sometimes overflow as these little dribblings from my fingertips. I guess you can try to collect and capture them.


Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Divorce (or small dark scars framed in white)

I miss the sounds of children,
their warm hands slapping against my cinderblock walls,
the same walls that caught their gentle breaths,
sheltered them asleep at night;
and heard their voices--
the way some deepened and boomed,
while others grew tender and lovely.

I miss the midnight pool lights,
lit up secretly during summer,
their droning neon buzz and the parade of moths
that continually danced in the pale lamplight,
the quiet laughter and excited splashes,
the way the lights turned off abruptly
from the inside once discovered on.

I miss the cavalier pursuits of youth
under the stoic gaze of adulthood,
the unconcerned and the desperate
trying to balance themselves within my walls,
in a house where love and joy
made occasional tidal bursts
instead of steady even flows.

I miss the lost looks of the parents,
staring at their reflections
in the bedroom mirrors, the bathroom vanity--
I watched them age,
wrinkles widening, greying hairs lengthening;
I watched their eyes darken into hard black pinpoints,
their lips pursed tight together
as they came and went
and passed each other wordlessly at night.

I miss the hollow hole--unrepaired for years--
hammered through my back bedroom door by an angry fist
and a rough cry of shock and defeat;
all that sleeping in two separate beds,
two separate rooms when I wished it were one;
and the dinnertable quarrels around a checkbook,
because it was all the conversation they ever had.

I miss the moving men,
who carelessly scraped paint from my doorway
with the edges of the old chestnut dresser
(the one with the burnt black incense circle),
making small dark scars, framed in white;
the look of the bare orange kitchen tile,
those once-crowded countertops useless,
all closets empty, walls and carpets immaculate:
abandoned.

I miss those same voices I once loved,
so vacant, so feeble and hollow now,
mechanically announcing quick arrivals and quicker exits
(ephemeral, the way a child can become an adult
and then quickly pace down these old familiar hallways
after so many years).

I miss the sounds of their engines
as they drove away,
separate cars into separate worlds.
The lifeless bonds that
time and remembrance forged between us all
forgotten,
left with a SOLD sign like a headstone
and a small stack of flyers
strewn across the naked kitchen countertops.

5 comments:

mattbeatty said...

In case anyone from my family reads this: this is semiautobiographical, obviously, but I took the liberty of making things sounds just a little bit worse, just a little bit more melancholy, depressing, deadend, hopeless and suchlike.

Anonymous said...

Uh huh...

mattbeatty said...

Yeah, I thought you'd think that way. So here's the story: I wrote this for a poetry class, using prompts we were given. I chose to use personification (the house--could've been done better but oh well) and using an 'emotionally-charged' title without specifically addressing that emotion or event in the body of the poem. For some reason this idea/concept is the one that came to me, and I stuck with it. Yes, some of it's fiction (grey hairs, moving men?, lack of continual love, etc.); no, these aren't what my memories really entail. Just wanted to use the subject matter for class, for a poem. Call me creative, leveraging a bit of my past to create a whole new weltanschauung.

heather said...

matt i believe in doing that completely. you have every right to tweak reality for art. it is a natural process.

Reluctant Conquistador said...

I teared up almost (not kidding), the nostalgia is beautiful.