Fall of Babylon

I can remember where
we were, but only
because the picture
tells me so.

Not the exact moment—
but memory serves me,
over easy
cold breakfast conversations.
Playing games 
on the back of a cereal box,
waiting for you 
every day,
offering up mere Fruity Os
however well
you can see through them,
the bag, 
and my veiled intentions.

Dainty, child-like fingers
small enough
to ring me a winner.
Choosing your suitor
based on the flavor of the day.
Struck with this, not
once, but twice,
breaking our engagement
as you stand,
cutting me open and
spilling my remains along the ground.
People pass us by, and
will forever walk all over me,
crushing me beneath their heels,
to sugary powder—
the kind that tastes so
sickeningly sweet
in the milk at the end of the bowl.

Couldn’t always hang onto
you, your gaze
forever, could I?
Forever unsure of the right words
to use and
where to place them,
with the perfect caption
next to the snapshot
of our “lives.”
These ideas expressed
I’ve longed to write,
these scribbling which will
somehow find their way
into a slushpile of works-in-progress,
and anthology, perhaps,
a future I always meant to 
write, until I was written off.

WARNING: The following material may not be suitable for some viewers.

The television shows
flicker and flash,
a continual burn and crash,
of images immolated
burned
into the screens
of our collective unconsciousness,
unfiltered.
Beyond our wildest
imaginations, playing with us,
over and over, again and again,
nothing
we want to see,
can’t help but look.

People pressing in, 
unable to breathe, 
constricting movement
to any other place
than here.

Up, up, up those steps
longing for
the answer at the top.
Wouldn’t be climbing them
without the promise
of the stairway
that leads to cleaner breathing air.

So much for comfort,
this empty space between the beds,
hard and unyielding, 
like your heart, 
open for suggestion.

Even as towers fell,
I was erecting my own.
Wish I could say mine
withstood terroristic tests of time.
Pedestal’s placement,
the mortar mixed,
mistakenly.

Nothing like
tragedy to tear
things apart.

My mind was on this morning.