Ailment Poem by Amberlee Carter

The ravening stillness,

my heart bleeds out across this empty morning:
Drifting down country roads
city streets for news of peace,
for a soulful rhapsody of rarefy language.

Today I find myself
on neither side of war and peace,
beatitudes or voodoo, love nor hate-
Just swaying somewhere in the middle of truth.

Flowing through the ease
of burning leaves on another fall afternoon,
reflecting a world with out hope in their ashes:
Any one of us could be the smoke and rise above the flames.

I'm a lover, though
I'm broken into pieces, too small
to scatter to the wind-

So much of the time, I am ready
to be hunted by the darkness:
I dream of a perfect world.

It must be found outside of this struggling circle-
This womb is tearing,

the rheum of God's invisible eye
is beginning to envision, again.

What is lost, entangled chaos and solitude,
I used to seek refuge in relation,
mistake understanding for silence-
and now I go, these days
roundabout God's snow-globe aware, I am alone
and how it is most likely I will forget
to stop by the mailbox,
to receive a postcard from your vacation oasis-
To give me word of this, to give me word of you.

I will walk these miles still
reciting what's left of the poetry
that courses through my brittle cords-

Perhaps I spoke too clearly, too honestly,
for you've decided
the heart is something you've denied
for longer than I am willing or able to strive-
and I am unsure now,
unsteady of your drumbeat and the battle it is waging.