MIDLIFE

  
Wide awake and half-blind at midlife
I stand close and smell the dark clothes
of his will, the angel I trust less
than my faithless father, my lover unkissed.
Outside the sick and suffering who speak
knowingly of God retreat to sad rooms
and the wail of a fertile feline alarms the street
with dreams of tortured children.
I stare at the prison of my room
invaded by everything that's outside of it
amazed at how my hands twitch for television
to carry off my feelings and deliver me to sleep.
Burroughs' scrawny ribcage
and the panicky sweat of a Muslim Serb
look back from the mirror of my sheltered suffering.
This silence glows red with the poison of sugar
and the unshakable odor of decaying skin.
There's a distress that falls in the middle of the night
for lack of someone to speak to simply.
I would give anything now for the silent agony
of your bare back, offered without apology,
accepting the loneliness that makes me cling,
the thousand doubts I won't mention in the morning.
There's no blood in the bread dough.
No amount of breakage, malice, or prayer
can make it rise faster. But bodies touching
do sharpen the blade of the knife.

-- Don Shewey