Photography © Edward S. Gault

 

honey, would you please turn out that light?

i can’t think anymore.
my thoughts tap my shoulder and run away
they touch a shoulder, and peer over the other
girlishly giggling.
love, you should be here.
sitting with me in my mind.
sorting through these prayer flags and
ripped pages scampering skittling
bouncing in the wind tides as they
drown me, pull me to and fro and
when you smiled at me they would
settle down isn’t
                                      that
              something
                                      beautiful?
isn’t that something worth writing down?
isn’t that something?
what’s in this skin trap anyhow
i can’t tear it out
i have to wait for the worms to come
and lick their little lips and rub their
bellies and eat away at it and it might
smell like shit and rot. but i
hope it does. i hope to god
it does or else that will mean
i was wrong and i think i would
like to be right about something.
right as day.
                         right as time.
right as sun.
                         right as light.
i drag my feet through this sinking night.

stinging wheezing coward eyes beg:
what’s insane about putting
these thoughts into a whisper?
what’s insane about my best
corrupted angel friends,wings broken, panicked:
manic matt found laughing mad
at our situation,
police: “what’s so funny?” but those
pretty uniformed boys wouldn’t get it.
what’s insane about cynical jake
prancing through his storybook mind,
finding flowers in darkest crevices,
flowers that grow without light,
seen only by the wandering shade?
and all these friends scattered over land rolling,
spinning in abysmal space, fighting distant
battles, cannon echoes forging a sign for the new rain
as my peaceful pipe exhales prayers for
darkness which comes first
as circles around my cavernous world-lids?
“how then
                         do we wait out
the long
                         decay?”
a desire to appear hopeful, strong for you,
bit back tears with trembling cracking fangs.

what’s insane about god, with
death as his prod? we fat, dumb, cattle
chewing under moody clouds?
he-god she-god me-god
what’s insane about we-god?
what’s insane about turning
out that blinding light?
more i stare more i squint
attempting to squeeze out the light
smother the life…
and i know, i know, i feel like the biting cold
that insanity is only
what we don’t understand.
and so i do not recognize it
as it pulls worn rag tight over my eyes
spits sticky goo onto my face
branding me with contempt,suffocating my mind.
darkness permeates milky skin as leaves
abandon green for browns and reds,
increasingly indifferent,
                         i get thrown in the mud
i lay there
                         i start to love the mud, too. . .

honey, would you please look at me?
no, i can’t ask you to see me, love,
i can ask only that you dream my weary becoming
sweeter than the odors suffocating sniffling nostrils
for in the daylight’s cruelty
i see you are not with me.
i beg of the paranoid apparitions
i beg of your memory ghost
i beg of heaven or hell
the laughing gatekeeper the screaming prophet:
won’t you please turn out that light?
and yet
in the arrival of evening’s hopeful extinction
i feel your presence bleed from my heart
and i see you in the withering of day
the collapsing of reality and the blooming of dreams…
honey, you can turn out that light now,
                         so i may see stars.
you can turn it out now and hide
            our weary cabin in the night’s blanket.

 

Eric Bischoff is a poet living in New Jersey. He’s been published in online magazines mostly, but has also been found driveling on multiple boardwalks as well. Other than that, he works on music for his project Denosoar.

Edward S. Gault is a poet and fine art photographer. He lives at Mosaic Commons, a co-housing community in Berlin, Ma. He has a wife Karen, and daughter.