Toy

Shattered antique doll limbs

lie crucified in front of that house

in the muddied deflower bed.

They were put there with the aim

of protecting that kid from those

curses that would make his hands

turn to sacred sweaty things

and give him spots and scars

and painful years so he’d never

want to go swimming ever again.

All grown up now, the featherless biped

fell victim to that voodoo, but still,

wades into the warm slow rocky flow,

wanting to be swallowed into oblivion,

into the savior, craving for some vitamin j

to come down through the pearled clouds

or via the bulrushes and cattails shoreside

to turn this water from consciousness

into something that goes down smoother.

But nothing and nobody came:

playtime’s finally over,

and he’s had enough to drink

of that sentient potion at last.

His cracked puppet parts

will become the riverbed

just like everybody else’s bones.

And exiled cities

will gather on his ashen sand,

getting sunburnt on salvation,

sodom, gomorrah, and hope.

If they could just figure out

that song of meaning ...

[or was it a poem?]

but the words are just

out of reach, unrhyming,

without a melody or meter

to carry anybody anywhere at all.