when in doubt.

Playing solitaire by the water,

watching the clouds move over the game,

watching the sun fade away.

The weather is calm;

the souls are at rest today.

The people are watching 

from below

as well as above.

    

Cards are running low,

the deck is getting thin.

The day is fading away without me.

Golden bows

blast open the doorways

to unforeseen manifestations.

The stars and the moon arrive.

The soul is awakened by a purpose,

and then quickly runs out of ideas.

Nothing lasts forever.

         

Night comes,

making it hard to see

characters and playgrounds

bargained by jack’s and ace’s.

The joker, a trickster and a prophet,

reminds us

that there is always a truth within a lie

and some lies help to make us feel better.

dead letters for living people

consequences.

It only took an hour.

Earlier this afternoon,

I realized we’d be running

for awhile, before the words

even had time to attach themselves. 

Somehow, I wasn’t worried…

She drove most of the way,

he remained silent,

thinking of what to say.

Sitting in the back seat,

watching the fast paced world speed by outside,

and the slow creep of time inside,

I was reminded of this dream I use to have

when I was a child.

If ever a time existed for either of us.

A man who would sit outside this house,

playing cards,

each card had a symbol and a portent,

each time I had the dream,

a different deck of cards

Maybe it was the sunlight

bouncing off the clouds

and onto the ground that reminded me of the sky that shone above that man’s house that triggered recollection.

I Haven’t had that dream in years.

Haven’t dreamed in months.

Later, that afternoon,

as we watched him

shuffle himself

and his consciousness

back to the car,

I could feel her smile

shattering onto the floor.

     

Tiny, sharp fragments

nipping at my heals.

          

“This should’ve been better.”

     

The words managed to stick

themselves to the cuts.

          

Blood clotting themselves onto oblivion.

josephmcabral.com

dead letters for living people

beginning

She laid there. 
A warrior with a thick candy coated shell.
She was more than just depraved and starved; 
he was nothing to himself; yet, 
unwilling choices brought them together.
She smiled in a passive pleasure at the blood trickling off her flesh. 
She was no one when they met, yet he wanted to be her, 
touch her, 
her perfume swelled in the air. 

He looked at her, he saw himself; she knew who he was.
She allowed him to use her and yet refused him this desire. 
The sweat spilling over his body, dripping down his back, 
her flesh taunting in a perfect way that demeaned him of his own vanishing manhood;
crawling onto her, 
inhaling her, 
how he wanted to consume her and all that she meant to him.

There was the smile, 
emanating like a beacon from he knew not where. 
He grabbed at her throat; the girl could see heaven in his eyes. 
Whatever was left of her innocence was bubbling to the surface. 
After all these years, she now knew where she was going. Her release was with this
prosthetic-angel that had lost its way from heaven but could guide her home.
The man moved deeper, 
holding her tighter, he could smell her aura upon him, 
her unwashed hair, and the bruises. 
Broken pieces of her were sticking to him 
like so much garbage that it began to disgust him. 
If the eyes are the windows to the soul, he could see himself in her reflection.

So much of him was in her, and vise versa, that it made him scream out, 
she never made a sound and simply invited him in.
The control broken, 
the illusion reversed, he fell on her, exhausted, 
defeated, beaten, he let go his hold on her.
The man began to shed his own tears, the saline washing lines on her body.
His stomach wrenched, his heart, sore and darkened.
This man-child lay upon his eternal mother of us all. He lifted himself off of her,
a trail of snot, spit and tears following him from the pooled reservoir on her flesh.
Her eyes went blank,
he could see it, and they turned cold at the realization of his own inadequacies;
her face undid his own frailties.
The man knew, but was not capable of achieving
that which she had inaugurated him to do.
Her truths closed in and shadowed the light that was in her.

He moved onto the floor, lying atop the coldness of the room;
hearing the voices around him and below him,
all life contained within this building and taken away on the outside.
He lay naked upon the grime and dirt of worn souls and past lives;
he could hear her breathing and feel her heart beat in his skull.
He saw her move in the darkness of the room, the only light filtered in from the street.
The man realized her salvation was close,
the door within reach and he failed to show her the way.
He saw it shine in the dirty light.
Unbeknownst to him she had a piece of someone else’s love,
meant to protect her, and with that love, she opened her own door
and entered with a smile.
Her thoughts splattered on the wall
read by everyone who could decipher the language.
In with a bang and the building fell silent.

josephmcabral

dead letters for living people