Burned Bread

image borrowed from bing

Burned Bread

Sometimes God can be a mad baker,
and some souls wander about overdone.

It would be wise to give a wide berth
to the man with the mind as narrow
as Portuguese village streets;

you may not notice him at first,
nearly invisible in our midsts,
never holding anyone’s gaze,
never venturing off center,
never traveling at night
without a substantial light,

quivering in the presence
of his own shadow, disliking,
perhaps even hating himself
and blissfully ignorant of it.

He refuses to glance into mirrors
because he actively fears that within
the cold depths of that terrible reflection
his icy soul prowls dark and dangerous,

and if he actually saw himself he might
shatter like plastic pulled from dry ice,
and the unrecognizable visage would
not be the person he perceives he is,

leaving him lost in the translation,
so he desperately clings to his habit
of stamping his false icon on the furrowed
brows of passers by, imprinting a lie

like a postmaster gone mad, stamping
and re-stamping, a man half swallowed,
with edges as black as char, burned
and brittle, with no sleeves ever long
enough to cover them.

Glenn Buttkus

January 2012

Listed as #98 over on dVerse Poets, Open Link Night 25

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