Trial by Winter Solstice

Get me through this night, this long, drawn-out arena for
sleep and dream, this dark allocation for Winter Solstice.
Allow me my own moon to offset this ebon shroud,
present me a snippet of left-over sun to fend off
the obsessive compulsive hours awaiting.
This is dragon time, a time I’d like
to slay, but cannot, for I am
without adequate lance.

Cold winds blow and shadows dance
and stars and planets dot the sky.  Velvet
is the firmament that brags of its eternal stead!
So why should I be so afraid?  And why should I
become the coal to fuel the kiln of panic and depression?
Nay, time’s extended bragging notwithstanding, I can make
hot chocolate and synchronize myself with furnace hums, or
even with the rackety clack of gutter duct upon the house.
There is no time but now; there is no life but this.

TV wears out its welcome, online wears out its welcome,
loneliness wears out its welcome--but it does not care.
For it is without feeling, it is without pity, it is sans
remorse.  I do my best to ignore it, yet it mocks
and teases and haws like an onager just to get my
goat.  Ah, yes, a sadist awaiting sunset loneliness is!
It points a bony finger at the kitchen clock and grins
like a satyr-pimp as I grimace, thinking it is closer
to midnight when it is actually eight o’clock.

So get me through this darkest night, this lightless catacomb
of long wherein time sits with folded arms and stutters poor
and guiltless.  My pleas are heard, and thus ‘tis I to build a bridge
unto the dawn with presence and resolve, by waving away
bony pimps, and staring dragons in the face while
holding onto life.


32 Lines
Writer’s Cramp Co-Winner
12-21-15