This Shield I bear, no man can see;
It shades the eyes of all but me
Blistered hope rings 'round the edges,
This "Shield" is made from glass and wedges
within this Shield stifles my cry,
one for hope that I cannot find.

It eludes everyone except for me.
for I see,
for I see.

The days that grow, and the nights, so cold
I find myself utterly alone.
wind breaks my back, sun beats my chest,
and frosty becomes my breath.

The world tears shreds from me.
worse, It does so with glee.

The shield he sits and cries,
awaits someone with mother eyes.

all are deaf, but my shield and I.
All are deaf, yet I don't know why.

The spark
A spark, then nothing. The under toned melodies of the lake flash to life in one glorious instant, then die in the next. Another spark flashes into existence off my friends face then, as our eyes focus once again on the darkness you can notice a small ember of light, like a very small red Kuala bear hanging on for dear life to our cigarettes. The cigarettes are slightly crumpled. There is no life in them besides the tiny glowing ember, nothing but death and despair. A lost mans last hope. A small comfort for a king without a kingdom. We are talking about something, i’m not really listening. I let my mouth flow words while my thoughts are on other things.
I flick the cancerous stub to the wind. Poetry as it spins and cartwheels through the air, a gymnast in it’s own right. Then it lands, a baby dropped off at an orphanage, this cigarette abandoned. My focus sets on the tiny lights in the distance, stars but closer, showing the lake how to shine. Brighter then the ones above us, and not nearly as observant. People’s houses, people that are not important, people i’ll probably never meet.
We keep droning on about the same old things,none of it all that interesting. I reach for the box and start the race. I take another breath, death and joy pour down my throat like a waterfall, filled with candy and acid. Laying back on the table i feel the sturdy wood and hard gloss. is this what reality is? just a feeling, a sensation? My head flops back and I see the parking lot, i can hear the gentle whisper of a lovers first love. I can almost see the hoodlums of our time take off into the woods, for what is any ones guess. The blacktop is the one place where nature has been cut down completely. There is no life just hard. Contained by a narrow step of dirty white asphalt. It screams for life, you can see it in the cracks, in the weeds trying to grow in the cracks, it wants life, it wants to be free. But this will
Herrera 2
always be a dark place in my world of depot beach, it will always need to be “repaired”, have the life sucked out of it while the construction crew goes for it’s heart.
I stare at my cigarette, so close to the finish, just like all the other ones. Then, in one fluent motion, the ballerina takes the stage for her first and last performance. I reach for another piece of my apocalypse. as I take the lighter off the table I start to stare the cigarette down, the gentle kiss of life of life flashes before me and then the second act comes on stage and death reals it’s ugly head. I walk away, the cigarette blows gently off the table.