Poetry

By

David Bankson

Alacrima

Every heartache is worth examining

with a heavy loaded gun in mind;

but a calamitous event

flattens in a drop of saline

as it secretes from the lacrimal glands.

It serves to protect and heal

the surface of heart and cornea,

a softening of the scalpel blades –

necessary despite distortion.

The question remains of how to unload

without withdrawing into artifice.

The desert crocodile is known

to approximate its consistency

in terms of viscosity,

                                tonicity.

                    tonality,

                                totality.

No, THAT we understand, and all too well:

useless as a medical textbook

bracing a table leg,

and we won’t have any of that

if we are to be honest with ourselves.

I cannot find the words or facts

to express such devastating grief.

When tears alone are not enough,

I remain a loaded gun.

I remain a heavy, loaded gun.

Capital

There exist two types of sound:

The endless shrieking, and

The silence that drowns it.

We can’t go back after what we’ve done,

No matter how much we ignore.

Whispers slip through radio silence

And light upon our quivering shoulders

With the weight of a full moon’s gaze.

Thirty-thousand days…

After so long, who are the true monsters?

Memories exist only for the past,

But the past is false white noise.

Which dictionary defines “evil”

As the motive of ghosts?

We think we climb from a trench,

But we only fill its cavity with shit.

At first blush, it all seems utopian:

Decorating to cover up blood stains.

Listen! It’s the shrieks of specters

Behind our silent mass consumption.

David Bankson

David Bankson is a full-time autodidact with a lifelong passion for poetry, philosophy and linguistics. His works have been featured online at Thank you for Swallowing, Walking is Still Honest Press and Indiana Voice Journal. His greatest influences are John Ashbery and William Carlos Williams, though he’s secretly quite fond of the wordplay of Sylvia Plath. More of his work can be found here.