Long Forgotten Roads Poem by Liilia Talts Morrison

Moving on those time worn roads
Places, spaces, old abodes
Decades melting heavy loads
Graces, paces goading toads

Poems rising, fractured codes
Stymied rhyming, clumsy odes
Accidental travel plans
Sucked me to this haunted trance

Sizing, rising snails and toads
Bending, tending to corrode
Crows in rows of blackened mode
Marking moments pigeon-toed

Gracing, tracing fingers bold
Colder bony knuckles fold
Over moldy bookmarks rolled
Moisture mottled musk enfolds

Bloated frogs of terror’s game
Leaping, blotting hope in shame
Taunting, haunting hidden lanes
Choosing losers counterclaims

Seeping, creeping in the brain
Scant relief to be insane
Untold fears arise again
Loved ones huddle in the rain

Winter’s cold and heat again
Howling, shouting in white pain
Breaking innocents’ last grain
Harvesting a sought for claim

Cheap the human soul is sold
For a penny not of gold
Trusting, rusting metal molds
Rising, sizing vizes hold

Blessing, dressing cuts in twine
Meshing into wailing tines
Crawling into banyan vines
Ever into time enshrine

Twisted bristling braided knots
Casting flesh to gamblers lots
Numbered daily with have-nots
Sleeping numbly on wet cots

Kittens smitten, strayed from home
Metal pushing, pounding chrome
Till the noonday heat melts domes
Sweating tears in ocean’s foam

Orange glows the summer moon
Bathing buildings dressed in doom
Who will save this wretched room
Wrapped in glitter, stained and groomed

Faces, traces streaming by
Itching witches bending ties
Anger raging from small cracks
Slashing skin and breaking backs

Bring them on, those horses, trains
Mighty muscles, hoofs and manes
Snorting, sporting leather bands
Inky, stinky, grasping hands

Silver rings enmeshing toes
Piercing lobes and fungal woes
Creeping, sleeping in the bush
Clipping hedges green and lush

Blasting music small relief
Breaking pavements blistered grief
Shadows following our paths
Calling, taunting, do the math

Derelicts in ragged threads
Loosely hanging from sour beds
Holding on to grains of grief
Clasping, clutching papers brief

Feebly drawing hungry breath
Marked for suffering and death
Snuffed and puffed and huffed by smog
Self inflicted murky bog

Crows are perched on wires in rows
Winged lives in feathered clothes
Watching human dangers, woes
Stoic as a bird that knows

Wayward cats and parrots small
Stolen gifts in shower stalls
Moments oh so very brief
Glimmering a small relief

Dusty times and musty air
Dank depression everywhere
Fantasy goes for a dime
Pride and prejudice sublime

Lurking murky tarot ways
Sweet the pill of heathen stays
Now evolves to grit and slime
Hard earned bread sopped into grime

Saved by rabbis, guided soon
To a thinking, sinking gloom
Who will listen to this rant
Scantly cloaked in writers cramp



Meshing moments threshing grief
Healing, stealing tortured thief
Prison schism scant relief
Pills and chills in chambers brief

Etched and branded on my dais
Will time’s march wring out that craze
Far removed from those dark days
Drenched in tears and pale malaise

How can I forget past scenes
Etched and branded in my genes
Galloping depression’s blues
That not even death can soothe

May those paths that I once trode
Still stay fresh as age corrodes
Brains in chains and body bowed
Ah, those long forgotten roads.