By: Kara Roberts

the slow lonely moments
that drip by and drizzle
like stampeding tar
black and ugly.
it’s a lanky sedated parade
of disingenuous smiles
barely rippling the surface
of the ancient tongue-tied statue
who can’t feel the grains
of the windlessly sliding surfaces
of its own stoic seams.
a stalactite,
lingeringly apologetic,
that stutters and tumbles over the tongue of the cave
teeth like boulders,
lips like tidal waves
that never bring you home.
stuck between the aisles
of hope and hopelessness,
it’s a wandering journey
of porous protection.
it’s a shield of silky slinking feathers
whose insignificant spines snag
the thin fabric of your disastrously diseased,
your brittle dry bones
of crumpling crying cringing creation
scrambling for some semblance
of ribbon-laced reality,
of some place of permanence
that leaves you incapable of stagnation
and desperate for something broken.