APERTURE

I remember when I would sit down by Lake Erie,
another photo-op for Father,
who hid behind his metal, plastic & glass face
which shot rays of light towards us, trying to capture our truest essences
with its cold, round, 4-dimensional eye,
as it winked mere pseudo-adulation.
I would often wonder aloud what Father was really seeking to capture,
although he only casually replied- "Negatives."
Father rarely let me touch his face,
which he kept locked away within a metal, silver flip-top case,
where he also sometimes stored away his "recreational smoke."

Sometimes Father would suspend his mechanical face
from a sturdily woven Southwestern-motifed strap, to play upon his chest.
And, after while, I could recognize no other face in relation to Father,
and would find my melancholic little self peering longingly into the eye
of this reliably attentive machine whereever it prevailed,
perhaps never quite receiving the mirroring which I truly sought thereupon its other side,
yet with the keen, inherent Intuition of a Child,
would always find Father's third eye quite revealing of him, nevertheless.

BROTHER OF SLEEP

An alarm screams out a warning, but it is too late.
I am reluctantly stolen from my slumber,
Body & Mind heavy-laden already from the insurmountable weight
of wakeful consciousness, as, brooding, groggy & sullen,
I am hurled back unto the barren, unmerciful landscape
of that world which insidiously creeps, & toxically seeps beneath the thickened skin
and its many dark, hidden crevices, an all-too-deluminant light
of encumbrant expediency & sense-ability.

And who is the keeper of this House?
Neither Mother, Father nor Lover nor any of our earth-woed kin,
but the Brother of Sleep, avaricious & ever-omnipresent,
as we weigh the costs of Survival while Life itself extorts without us.

The work gets neglected & we soon come to see,
that there is no tenable way to stop the accounting without expending all
of the red ink to remind us our debits.
Yet the Overseer has still kept us intact, and we are at least reassured
that as long as there is blood running hot & quick beneath the skin,
the books shall remain in balance, & we, fatally noble & upright in our figurings,
until the costs of Survival reach their final recompense,
and the keeper of the House decides that he can live in indigence with us no longer,
sending the Brother of Sleep to keep us-
that mortal friend, enemy & forbidden lover of the Life we had so carelessly spent,
trying to preserve.