The body pushed to its limit, and then some. The heart ambushed by loss. The mind confined to its narrow repetitive lines. Lord, you know how lost and impoverished I have become. How little is left here but a pitiful flood of unwept tears. What she said, and later regretted saying, is no less true. I have no direction. I don’t have it now, and I never did. So direct me, omnipotent Director. Let me loose to love and serve and give you glory. To live as a free man might choose to live. Let me not tarry here for longer than necessary. I have already done that, and then some. It’s getting late. November again, and thirty Novembers come and gone. And the late autumn wind, I don’t have a clue what it’s saying. I can’t decipher a tale of daring in its chill refrain. I can only read the numbers on the fraying calendar. And the numbers don’t lie. The numbers say it’s almost December. And I can’t remember why I’m here.
Cold
Last Morning of November
It is the last morning of November. I wake at four to a cold house. Time to start the fire. The wood takes a long time to catch, and it takes me no time to grow impatient. Self-accusation begins at once, and the accused is guilty until proven innocent. How can you be so incapable? How, after hundreds of times starting fires, can you still struggle to accomplish the task this morning? The accused is in his own movie, the main and only defendant in a staged trial by fire, but try as he might he cannot get the wood hot enough to be tried. The case is neither well received nor poorly received by the jury. There is no jury, and there are no witnesses. No one else sits in this theatre of the absurd to watch this film on repeat reel. There is no reception; there was never a wedding; there will be no consummation.
Haiku 12.20.19
Cold coiled serpent
Thrives on heat my heart creates.
O my love, heal me.
Brian Leibold 