Self-Infliction by Dan Provost

 
Events you thought inconsequential…
Lightly touching my hip in the
Used book store or rubbing the
Small of back at the amusement park…
 
Probably whisked through your oblivion,
 
Meant the world to me…
 
But that was our walk through events for all time…
Never to happen again.
 
The smallest gestures, you threw away–while the
Receiver of the cherished gifts…
 
Suffered in the early morning hours
When cries are heard by one…
 
I have never spent more conscious days in my life when I was with you…
 
Every movement of step a beautiful journey…
 
A surprise—you not knowing;
                     I quietly exhilarated…
 
At every glance or stare…
 
Disregarded?  Probably, in your reality of real world milieu…
 
They were bibles to me…to take out, studied and worshipped
 
Then put away until another 4 AM epiphany starts me pacing in
My silent gallows…
 
Only the beating of the heart, or the sobbing of the one crow
Who sits alone on top of the birdbath…
 
Are heard while the world is still asleep….
 
My grief is silent…the soul is saddened.
 
I may never be home.

World Widows by Dan Provost

She dreamt of armies,
Men who fought and bled…

Different names
Different guises

All tired from strife
throughout the centuries of victories and defeats

Body counts told to grieving widows
Whose lovers were sold a bill of goods
by entrapped loyalty their men
purged so ravenously into their soul.

The women cried, present and past
Roman widows
English widows
American widows…

World widows.

We were born to suffer, not wander
as the famous song once said…

drifting into slumber…she knows
that one will not come home…

ever.