Author: Ed Nobody

The last day goes by unfelt. No change. Time turned glacial under rubbled roads in thick tar, sticky black thick leaking sun of dead summer.

I didn’t breathe and felt nothing.

Wind stopped bothering; leaves not leaning, unswayed by final wind to grace God’s grey earth, before all turns rot-orange, stand-still, decay in place.

I’m flat ground, inert, weathered. No illness, ceasing, death felling each blade of bad grass past hollow trees and fields uncut, shaggy seeds split off fallen flat in mud, unkept, unloved—song of sick birds—wheel waiting to topple.

Can’t feel—breath stuck—blanked thoughts—dry sponge—brittle break—There! A hint of wind sweeping moldy panes dirty grey with grease and stains, bitter coffee tang, lukewarm tongue, morphing garlic gag swish mouth bitter bad and then blank.

A plain van streams a slippy-line swiiii then gone into more ghost lost to who knows where—
Fading.

My spoiled in ground corpse won’t be found in this fallow field, yielding last living cells to promise of new day—new smell, new chirping birds flitting through woods of willow, chirp drowsy and mellow, life once more before last end, don’t let go, heat turning to chill—
A small shiver up spine, ground’s or mine? Ah, ache, pain, reminds.

Tight vines cover lost parts—red death shroud covers broke bones, blood-blemished clods of dead clay, some resting place. Who cares? The earth, stopped turning, lies flat.

We once kept the will to fight, dreams of war, delusions bored and unaware of terror—forgot or didn’t know the worst this land has to offer—woke up with blood in gutter—
Then too late to matter.

There. Maybe sweat, stale weeds, low rumble grunt of aching tree to weep tree, shadows blot out sky greyed regret, poor souls not knowing what hit—en masse grumbles, sky-liquid liquor not quelling whine of wind—still there, waiting to whistle through empty streets when the earth breathes out—
Will it?

Grand visions traded for frustrations, gurgled constipations of desire, once wild blazing fire now feckless ember throbbing in leaky guts, whining bellyaches of thousand slaughtered men shakes through clouds, raining on my rotten body stirring wake from death dreams, sweet death uncoming, mute non-death stretching out pale white blades, taunting me with specters of what was.

No raging waves thrash within—flat horizon, sun not coming—all red shadow—lumber to land—scraping behind—Rabbit? Or wind giving last blow, shake of the limbs before it goes—
Or a rabbit that wants grass still green to root, cawing rooks happy harping, creatures scurry squirming, trying, no denial, no need to convince themselves the world’s more than a ghost-shadow, doubt—
But maybe, unknowing, works. Turn into a worm beating happy fat tail in dead mud. Dirt feeling. Wake up to dirt air, sooty smoke of clogged chimneys, dry rain, numb ground, still wind, nothing, nothing, nothing, no vast mirage, no pining, ignoring now’s gnawing, forgetting rusty rot eating through to the bone. Here and gone.