PoetryEtc Featured Poet: Mark Weiss   

Your servant is your friend, your hand
is your father.
.
You come back.
You know you blew it.
Everyone dies.
.
This is the only test.
.
The rain has stopped.
A young woman stands on the terrace
looks towards the valley.
The near cloud
the long white one
could be a ridge-line.
.
The darkest time.
.
Lavender's blue
rosemary's green
when I am king
you shall be queen.

On my back
from this mountaintop
stars, the milky way.
.
Lost. What was it? Unlit,
etcetera, the red dirt, the dusty greenery.
.
As if I were woven of different threads, red
for sex, blue for calmness, yellow
for intellect.
.
Bats at the mouth of it
fly out at dusk
re-enter at dawn,
so many teeth folded around themselves
on the cave's palate.
.
In the old days men brought birds with them into excavations.
When the air was spent
the bird fell, its eyes
as shut as a raisin, dead.
So the men would clamber upwards.
The girls at Auschwitz
scorched lungs, clawing
for the light of the windows,
no longer seeing or caring about their tormentors,
breaking their nails on the walls.
.
Memory loss—inattentiveness—small details
confusion
weakness
vision clear, but blurred connection between vision and understanding or touch
anger and fear
paranoia—need to escape

At waking, after meals.
.
Total simplicity allows the killing.