(CW: Mentions of death)
the please-come-home-for-christmas radio, the fairytale-of-new-york radio, the ave-maria radio
is a time machine is a corpse is just
static in the air like damp pine needles and frost.
a stag is not a god. a god is not an animal
staggering away from a festive-music-radio-corpse.
a stag is a deer with extra bones, a lucky strike,
a primordial lottery ticket like Christ strung up with thorns in his forehead.
the christmas card scene looks like leaf litter and rot
when you lose sight of the not-a-stag-and-not-a-god.
the season calls out:
congratulations, you are the newest lost wanderer! / welcome to the deconstructed nether /
you win / a self-examination / you win / a lump of coal and calcified dread / you win /
the woods you grew up in, except the woods are all dead.
the bones of your old pets shake at the bottom of the riverbed.
the willow weeps into narcissus’s pond dried-up to nothing.
this is mythologised apathy. a romanticised unbecoming.
calamitous morning fog, sipping tea in the shadows, watching stags
spring across your closed eyelids. you seek the sun, pitifully weak.
you seek canines sharpened to jagged points.
the street-sick foxes eat scraps under bruised darkness
and you don’t think about the people in your house
handing over the ragged parts of themselves in snowflake wrapping paper,
vacuous thoughts on winter nights itching beneath tinsel and tape.
you do think about the ghosts of all the animals
you’ve seen haunting the side of the road in your race to get out,
trying to run from the inevitable countdown of a year gone by.
maybe you’ve seen more birds flattened than flying.
hurt is never gilded.
the _________________________ radio, the _________________ radio, the ________ radio is a _________________________
hello?
who turned the radio off?
Latest Comments