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Sunday, 17 August 2014

A poem about life and guilt by David Tombale: In the love of strangers


Sometimes an overwhelming urge to escape from our mistakes can come over us so this piece is all about running away.
 
 
 
In the love of strangers
A half-forgotten candy bar rests inside
my cupboard shelf next to books I swear
I never read, next to letters from absent
friends.
 
I’ve packed a bag full of winter clothes,
fur jackets and heavy boots,
I take no photos with me,
they’re too weighty, too much like carrying a shrine along,
too much like carrying my memories with me.
 
The scent of spring is in the air,
the odor of rain that might one day fall but
I won’t be waiting by my window to watch it
strike these trash strewn streets.
 
My guilt will not let me lie,
it raids my dreams and leaves its
footprints in my mouth,
it casts its shadow in my tears,
in my frown.
 
I can’t stay here,
can’t bear to rest my head when
the walls fall down,
I think I’ll take my book of letters,
my faithful compass, and climb inside this
truck on a voyage I must take,
far from seasons, far from roads,
far from the plastic sheen of my telephone.
I’m headed somewhere where the crowds
don’t know me, where the years will pick me
clean and leave me soaking in this sea of sanity,
in the hostile love of strangers.
 
 

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