Unprotected Vision

Naively I peered beneath the lovely thin veneer of bullshit with my naked eyes

Destroyed both my retinas having neither proper guidance nor protection

Took it straight into my brain for reasons that I could not explain

While you stayed safely in the shadows and always asked me why

Ingested the potent images which harmed my inner workings

Stared straight at the radioactive glow emanating from the blistering center

Remained unaware for years of the accumulating damage

the pure whites of my eyes grew yellow and their clear lenses fogged

Gazed fixedly at things you had the commonsense to just ignore

Blinded for long periods by the searing after-images

Stumbled about as my eyes readjusted and you thought me drunk

I never understood the hazards of my unprotected vision

Could not stand the thick dark blinders which might have saved my sight

Dismissed as cowardly those who did not peer as deeply into the flames

Scorched my rods and burnt my cones until dark and light were just the same

Shorted out my optic nerve on impulses that others painlessly avoided

My visual cortex smoked and melted down from the overly-bright, chaotic flashing

Processed too many inputs that normal folks had the sense to turn aside

Stared long at harmful emissions from which they quickly looked away

Felt the grotesque images they never saw become part of my nightly dreams

Was driven by my visions into a rant that was incomprehensible to others

Finally tried to look away, but by then it was far to late to matter

At last I could no longer see even in the good light of simple daytime

Then, I illuminated everything with the rays that had made me mostly blind

Crawled off into the depths but could not be soothed, even by the empty darkness

Took to cursing your protective lenses which were broken when I got them

Stumbled more as I grew older and my sight narrowed to tiny points

Seared in vain, my eyes could not share the visions that supported you

Unprotected gazing made me blind but what I had seen would not then sustain me

Darkness At The End Of Fall

Without leaves, tree branches glisten from late November rain

reflecting an empty light from the gray sky on the dead grass below

unshaven men in dirty clothes muddy their tattered shoes leaving old cars

soaked litter lies hopelessly where the wind draped it weeks ago

somehow the crows locate calmly-moving death and gather like huge flies

off in the muffled distance, an empty freight train squeals

muzzle frozen in a grimace a dead dog bloats down in the brown grass swale

the dark evergreen casts no shadow as a church bell strikes off noon

cold floors and dark closets await behind the dirty windows

rusting metal appears where the weedy shrubs long ago lost their leaves

naked lightbulbs hang dim from bare cords in moldy stooping-low basements

old pipes groan all night yet bring but very little dry and brittle heat

the light gives up completely in what seems like early afternoon

the muffling darkness grows stronger as it slows life every day

the mud grows hard in the morning after the puddles have skimmed with ice

the sun shines wanly an hour a week then quickly disappears

the nights are absent moon and stars beneath a low gray ceiling

colored lights are used to try and ward off the gathering gloom

cars idle inside steamy clouds of their own wastes and the people stay indoors

now the old, sick or weak fall prey to the first wave of infections

brown and rain-soaked dead leaves molder in every corner

lifeless flower beds sadly mock us with their current promise

sleep increases with the length of night and tiredness overtakes us all

there is little joy upon awakening in the gray and damp and cold

the lakes move steadily towards freezing and look duller than the skies

far off dogs bark away the dark hours in their lonely solitude

a howling wind springs up to freeze the rain upon the pavement

women shiver and grow pale as their skin dries to thinnest parchment

And castoffs walk the streets alone, absorbed in careful examination of the darkness