Love Poem: Sackcloth and Ashes
Tony Bush Avatar
Written by: Tony Bush

Sackcloth and Ashes

Midnight chimed day assassination, 
  sudden as a brain haemorrhage, 
  star-stabbed by psychotic pins; 
  issues aborted of carbonised wombs 
  blacked streets, tar-slithered. 
Recovering drunk, cold sobered, 
  imaged upon liquid plate glass, 
  appliances dormant and flower-pressed 
  beyond his ghost, 
  whiskey tears wept prior sins. 
Crying within for little or nothing, 
  the once embryo of the thing he became, 
  or that reflections now seem 
  more tangible of look than 
  he would ever feel again. 
Invisible sackcloth mantled the bones, 
  he wore it well, 
  his future path paved ashes 
  to some place in the dark, 
  the equation lacked love. 
So the dead can walk, he observed, 
  approximating signs of life; 
  and so well he knew the dead, 
  they whispered catechisms in his head, 
  for he only ever talked to himself.