Crossroad Entente Poem by Norman F. Santos

The muzzy gloaming watched
Two lovers gliding past
The old serpentine road
Catching the last streaks of fire
Both hands interlaced,
Both hearts on the sleeves,
Both surreptitiously stealing the charms
Dangling on both wrists
And before the road unwinds
They sealed treason with a kiss;
The road pounced in hubris
The lovers embraced defeat
As they fall in love
With the sole idea of it
And divulge into a treaty
With the intertwining roads.

Whilst downhill, past the museum
Where the boulevard was a jungle
And the illuminations were low
But the premature stars were aglow
Cascading down the deathly hallow
A pack of wolves saunter
Reeking with carnal hunger
And the stuttering caveat
Espies for the periapt
Of a prospective prey
Drifting with a different starvation.
In the instigation of decision
Bloods will pact on the gravel
Another road will kill corrupt
The advances in one’s path
Whose pathway, I’d like to know

The unruffled tresses of the hill
Cleared the lazy patios
For a vagabond wandering
In her gravid belly
And beneath the crimson firmament
At the summit of the tor’s ripple
Stood the succulent temptation
Of stagnation, in the semblance
Of a plushy apple tree
And the nomadic dream
To be truly free
Chose the vacant atmosphere
Apt for a paper plane—less the liberty
And devoid of serendipity.
A profounder undertaking
For a severer toll.

All these roads,
Are wedged by the same codes.
All these roads undulate
And fork to an intersection
Where the hell hounds slumber
On the feet of their master
Inexorably, the devils outnumber
The superfluity of the sun
That supplies quintessence
To the gnashing rivers
Of our hissing veins
And cajoles with a promise.
But the demons are not
Amongst these roads
But we, we are.

There are roads
Wrought at the chambers
Of our apathetic sleeping hearts
Stretching in fathoms
And we traverse them
In wake and sleep,
And we traverse them
Without mounting our feet,
Yes, we take them
As much as we take the roads
Of the countries and interstates
And as much as these roads
Take us.

This avenue coils
Like a string of havoc
And once we take it
It would rise taut
Like a lynching rope
Finagling a head
Stuck on a crossroad.

Let me tell you that
These roads always end
In a crossroads’ abeyance
Where the demon shears
The epicenter of our quiescent hearts
But no one knows
How to trample on these roads
Because the heart is gone
On a long island shore
Bathing in the sun
But not in its radiance.
Yes, before we knew about
The entente of the devil
We have already submitted
To the crossroad deal
Because the devils
Are not amongst these roads
But we, we are.

Because we are
The traversing roads
Of fearful and ignorant

But quite frankly,
In compliance, in complacence,
Even in resistance
The heart would be panged
By abeyance
So we better not know
About these crossroad deals
And remain fearful;
Safe and afraid,
And ignorant:
By innocence
And tethering fate

But quite frankly,
Inexorably, the devils outnumber
Our superfluity
Because we are the crossroads.