BURNING HOUSE PRESS

Forty-One

When

You wake

From sleep

 

You wake

From death

You know

 

Fifty-One

Now

I become

You

 

Whereas

Before I was

New

 

Now I unfold

Into the

Enfolding

 

Horror

Of what comes

Next and then

 

Beholding

The dreadful

Faces of friends

 

Appearing

Deceptively

Untouchably

 

Turning in

The receding

Whirlpool

 

Eighty-Five

Another life

Was survived

Underground

 

In a cave

With only one

Hidden hole

 

To crawl out

Or into

Candle light

 

I dared not

Show myself

In the sun

 

For fear

My enemy

Would seize me

 

I believed

I would never

Again reside

 

In a house

Of wood bricks glass

Windows

 

Months

Blurring into

Years

 

Who knows

How long

The seasons

 

I survived

By drinking

The water

 

Dripping down

Through earth

And stones

 

 

 

---

Dan O’Brien has three poetry collections, published in the US (Hanging Loose Press & Measure Press) and the UK (CB Editions). He is also an award-winning and internationally-produced playwright and recent Guggenheim Fellow in Drama. Dan O’Brien: Plays One was published this year by Oberon Books in the US and the UK. Play excerpts have been published recently in Sewanee Review, New England Review, and Hopkins Review. He frequently teaches playwriting at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Find him on Twitter @danobrienwriter.

 

featured image by Trapac