Mrs. Church

Mrs. Church

Father, I have sinned.
Well, as I was saying,
Why this? Why now?
This long talk with myself.
An undisciplined prayer.
Apparitional, snaking inside
the mouth of a gun gray mental
heroin confession I'm climbing
toward on a ladder of cringe
while the beak of telling you this
nips at my tongue.
This could be about sex or the immutable
fire of holocaust, I don't know,
when I laugh the goddess of time
makes me bleed over and over again.

Why this? Why now?
A hunter approaching his quarry.
In journeying to and from land of Punt
the mind brings close
what fades in the process
of approach.
A motion eyes pick up,
a text, a narration on the text
all at once from beginning to end
narrowing through a distortional tunnel
choosing from the randomness
that sound, that smell, that taste,
aiming at the name of something
opposites create.

So much heaviness
in a name.
The weight
and bearing of it.
Animalia Annelida
Oligochaeta.
Romantic vowels
like worms curl
around the tongue
in a synthesis
of movement
or parting of shapes
slowly closing
beyond sight or reach.

In front of a door left open
don't ache to solve the mystery of it.
You'd think crossing thresholds
easy because you're ten
and because disaster
has a history of whistling up
someone else’s shadow
like Mrs. Church, next door,
whose legs won't carry her
to the mailbox anymore.
So, I get the mail for her.
Her door is open. I call her name,
no answer. I move through
the curious silence of open doors
into her kitchen
and meet Mr. Death, up close
kissing and fondling Mrs. Church
on the cold linoleum floor.

The enigmatic communion
like a powerful
translation evolving
from the obscure
seasons of indistinctive
collage we can't help
but inhabit.
A vague resistance
of voice
echoing out
before date or venue is set
as the observer is caught
observing himself.


Scott Malby

Posted over on A Little Poetry