![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Spectre of debt
Apr. 16th, 2003 07:31 amThat poetry exercise yesterday stayed with me. Some of the phrases were especially fertile and inspired this new poem.
~~~~
Spectre of debt
Who is the unchanging shadow
that walks here,
snatching passersby?
We never see them again.
His appetite is larger
than all of my years.
He hangs over me
like a man with a big knife
surveying the edges of my life.
He takes my acre of field
and scorches the grass
dragging away all the brush
and burning it
scattering my ashes
on another man's land.
The wail of numbers
is breaking my sleep.
Mind rotting,
I run like a dog through corners
of my own meadow at night,
starlight stinging naked soil
and shattering my eyes
to diamond dust.
The summons
unsettles me
but instead of going
I cower here.
I wake every morning
but the dream keeps returning.
I wake in sweaty folds.
My heart smaller than the hole in my chest
rattles like a seed in its crinkled pod
dried by the worry of fire.
~~~~
~~~~
Spectre of debt
Who is the unchanging shadow
that walks here,
snatching passersby?
We never see them again.
His appetite is larger
than all of my years.
He hangs over me
like a man with a big knife
surveying the edges of my life.
He takes my acre of field
and scorches the grass
dragging away all the brush
and burning it
scattering my ashes
on another man's land.
The wail of numbers
is breaking my sleep.
Mind rotting,
I run like a dog through corners
of my own meadow at night,
starlight stinging naked soil
and shattering my eyes
to diamond dust.
The summons
unsettles me
but instead of going
I cower here.
I wake every morning
but the dream keeps returning.
I wake in sweaty folds.
My heart smaller than the hole in my chest
rattles like a seed in its crinkled pod
dried by the worry of fire.
~~~~
