Gone Home
by Jackson smith
“‘Like a dog!’ he said…”
This roof’s caved in. A thousand driving rains
gnaw at the beams, seep into ceilings, sew
dark silken shrouds of mold. Within these walls
rats starve. Grim gales that shatter windowpanes
wake years of dust and years of ash and shame
to dance in howling zephyrs through the halls.
Old pools of mottled wax bleed bubbling stains
that scar the doorjambs. Ragged roses hiss
through blunted thorns. One vine-encrusted bed
lies vacant in the splinter-choked remains
of feeble wooden boards that wail and shriek
when chords of thunder bellow overhead.
Ponder, perhaps, how songless morning grays
breed evenings laced with hard electric pain,
how dreamless slumbers grind each torpid night
to gruesome dawn, how crowds of silent days
march into storms or memories of storms
that char tomorrow down to bitter white.