These Words Are Ladders Out Of Here Poem by Ben Partenay

These words are ladders out of here
I’ve climbed them every night until,
the last rungs gone a ways from sight
and the moon is still.

Up here there is no city dust,
no lights track my shadow low,
no red light commands I stop
and so I go.

It’s quiet here on balcony’s
in windows that look down like god.
The world, it barely breathes from here,
a stagnant bog.

And so I climb my ladder down
to breathe again a maddening breath
of everything that this life is
as well as death.