death – Page 3 – Kevin Trent Boswell

encroaching

that taste
will not always
haunt the lips

or will it?

it is certain that
other hungers
will swarm the palate
and strangle
the familiar flavor

or is it?

the trail is littered
with the swollen corpses
of fabled monsters
and brittle heroes

the valley is cursed
and the sky is burnt

hedgerows of thorn bushes
quietly weep blood
in the shadows

they sing mournful songs
of blistered eyes,
salted fields full of silk roses,
wolfsbane and hellebore,
the broken teeth of clockwork dolls,
and a thousand crushed hearts
of little bluebirds
overflowing from the
mortar and pestle

beckoning mirage,
a courtyard fountain
that sprays only gossip,
a wishing well
of screaming sad sirens,
hungry to drown
all careless passersby

my history’s pages
are all made of dust

the cap is of old tile,
the gown is a shroud,
and the tassels are all
desiccated worms

guts of tapioca
and bones of papier-mâché

any junior scout
with a compass and a crayon
could’ve easily mapped out
my imminent demise

it would have
saved a great deal
of yet more useless time
had I set my fool’s course
directly for the rocks,
instead taking such
a circuitous route

surely, this was
how I stumbled;
once, at least

craving the honorifics
of a conqueror,
a king

chasing wispy legends,
a haunted city of gold
that lay in the heart
of an untamed jungle
on a remote little island
only rumored to exist

a gnarled patch of land
that only surged up
from deep ocean trenches
in the craven imaginings
of a syphilitic madman

a derelict scoundrel
who scrawled dark heresies
onto pages of black dust
in an ink made from octopus,
the dried blood of
slaughtered griffins,
slain wyverns,
and fallen angels

an El Dorado of oblivion,
always just over the horizon
swelling in the overheated
cranium of a lunatic
drunk on malaria
and a dry, bitter wine
made from red poison berries

any wobbly toddler
could have rightfully discerned
that it was only a cruel game of
peek-a-boo and goodbye

the face keeps disappearing,
disappointing, disapproving,
and daily disavowing

and never allowing
deeper mysteries
to be known

any toy soldier could have
made short work
of my defenses

the walls of my fortress
were destined to fail
and crumble
and be swallowed up
by the ruthless, ever-empty,
ceaseless cravings
of jaws that lust
for everything
and nothing

any busted clock
could have
told the tale
of how I was
out of time
before I ever
began

of how I would,
without doubt,
be swept from the decks
of the good ship of memory,
into the raging sea

it has always been a given,
that I would be erased
from the blackboard of thought,
and cast out of
the picture

it was always
understood,
a given,
a known

or was it?

Not Yet a Yearling

I.

Stumbling as we tumble down
From the decks above

Let’s spill some fledgling blood
On this virgin ground

Consecrate this sacred land
With sweet, sugary death

Dried up vestige of arterial lineage,
Like blackstrap molasses

A batch of fattening confections
In entropy’s galley

The host will have their way

The menu is set;
No substitutions

II.

Everything has lost its flavor

All of the dialogue and costumes
Receding into the background,
Lost amid aimless clamoring
For the awareness of others

A thousand colors
And two sizes

Seduced by the sidewalk,
Let us earn our wings,
And fly

The problem is clear
So, clear the table
Table the discussion
Discuss a potential agreement
Agree to the terms
Terminate the problem

The surgeon calls out sick

The sickness calls out
For a bone saw, scalpel, retractor,
And suction

Triage is a red carpet buffet
Of wide-eyed inspiration

For a man with no appetite,
You certainly are hungry

This one isn’t going to make it;
That frame will collapse
As soon as boots hit the floor

You gonna eat that?
It’s just going to spoil if you don’t;
These things have no shelf life

There is no point to any of it, anyway

So much more prudent
Than all this senseless striving

Everyone knows
It is not the guest
Who decides
What’s for supper

The table is already set…

Sit down and eat

Your loss

III.

Spill some for yourself
While you have the chance

Freshen your gunpowder

Powder your nose

Sanctify this unholy,
Godless parcel of dirt
With a little spritz
Of sweet annihilation

Cut It Out

Cut it out of the sternum
And place it on the altar

I no longer want it,
This bitter heart
In my mouth

A locked chest full of feathers,
Little lockets and silvery trinkets,
Walking sticks and reeds of bamboo,
Straps of leather and heavy chains,
Strange wires and clockworks,
Flowers of unusual, grand, noble gestures,
The teeth of pirates, the entrails of kings,
And the bones of beached sharks,
Now too frail to feed

The carpet needed
A little splash
Of red, anyway

You know, just a little something extra
To accent the curtains

The dusk and the music box
Both wait in the corner
To spit fire and agony
Into the flesh of the evening

Surrender to the waves

The waves were always wiser

They always kept moving,
Never weighing themselves down

Fight off all of those
Ridiculous impulses,
Provocateur pushes
To the edge of another,
Another one of those nothings,
Exactly like all the ones
That come night after night

Resist the pulse,
The catalyst incentives
To do yet more stupid things,
Stupid things like breathing

Sew this dumb mouth shut
With a spool of black thread
Stolen from the undertaker’s
Trench coat pocket

Do it before all of those sounds
Escape

All those sweet, garbled mysteries
That fell into it while I was drunk
On her flesh

And still foolish enough
To believe I was alive

Capture them in stitches
With the Devil’s dried-up veins
And a needle of blackthorn

Line the casket with
Old newspapers

And line the birdcage
With red silk

Pour me a bowl of stone gravel
And a ladleful of sour milk

Plug my ears with wax,
While they are still full
Of her laughter

The ancient cathedral
Has more than enough novenas,
And indeed, the blind priest,
He will not miss just one

Pull out these bloody eyes
With spoons made for ice cream

And press them both tightly
Between the pages
Of an old book of secrets

Here, they’ll be safe,
And spared the pain
Of seeing

Stuff the eye sockets full
Of meaningless words

Wrap it all up, and
Place it all in a box
A box made of yew,
And cedar and cypress

Then, nail it shut with
Rail spikes of iron,
Hammer them in tightly
With the skull of a ram

Stretch it over completely
With the skin of my body
Pull it good and tight,
As taught as the head
Of a plaintive dirge drum

Place the whole lot of it
In the hole and cover it over
With a shovelful of mourning
And a fistful of yesterdays

They’re far superior to these
Rubrics of today’s fabrications and
Tomorrow’s rumors of
Trial-and-error pleasures

But sing to it softly,
As you cover it with fresh earth,
So it will feel less alone
As it communes in silence
With all the roots and rocks beneath

The gris-gris is not sealed
Until you etch the proper glyphs
Into the tablet of lead, and you
Speak the words over it, and then
Place it in the ground

But miss nothing about this,
It is not buried treasure
Make no maps, no monuments,
No markings on the calendar

It is only a sarcophagus,
The coffin of a scorpion
Who dreamed itself once
A bright pharaoh of the valley
But awoke screaming in the night
To the songs of its madness
And it crawled into itself
And there, ever, it remained

Listen now to the kettle,
How it raves and howls,
How it steals hot kisses
From the streetlights below,
And thumbs its raised nose
At wandering ghouls

There will be no snow this winter,
Only weeping glaciers

And the sea will be taking
Its out-of-time cues
From the heartless sun
Who is thankful for itself

The ferryman waits for me,
On the bank of the morning

His oar is readied
And impatiently thumping

It is time to go

Sweat

To strive with the burden
Of what the next hours might bring

To have wrestled daily
With the fear of losing life

To be saddled with the dread
That there may be
Some indeterminate sentence
Of interminable, inescapable life
That one is somehow
Condemned to endure

To flounder helplessly
In the drowning pool
That sits between
These two feverish fits of delirium

To have drunk the madman’s wine,
That laced broth which inspires
And conjures those horrid devils
Known as fear, hope,
And love

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, and more

Under Your Feet

Author’s Note: Yesterday, I learned that someone passed away in my apartment building (presumably within a day or so of when I heard about it). I had never met them and they hadn’t been living here long at all. Their death was apparently not unexpected; I was told that they were in poor health before they ever arrived here.

The weird thing is, they lived in the apartment right below mine. But stranger still, I had occupied that apartment myself, up until just a few months ago. When my current unit became available, I took the opportunity to move because it’s quieter on the top floor. While I don’t think I ever met the tenant, it was a brisk reminder that death is never far away.

Death is right under your feet
But try to put it out of your mind
There are chores to do and
Demands to meet
So, try putting it out of your mind

Death is coming up behind you
It is wise to not make a stink of it
Since you cannot stop it, and
There’s nothing you can do,
It’s best to try and not think of it

There beside you, Death hovers
I suggest you pretend not to notice
It will pounce on nervousness,
Any weakness it discovers,
So, just casually appear not to notice

It may approach you from any angle
You are bold, but Death is much bolder
You can tell it’s there by the cold, stale air
That envelopes your throat to strangle
Death patiently perches on your shoulder

stain

In loving memory of Jevon Ward

he was speaking vodka,
a language that I understood
all-too-well

as I sat on the edge of his bed,
I handed him the joint
that I had just finished
carefully rolling

he lit it, and taking a small toke,
became suddenly
and uncharacteristically
serious

“You do know that I’m not life, right?”

it must have been obvious
that I had no clue
how to answer that,
so he continued,

“When I was just a little boy,
“your grandpa (and mine) told me,
“he said,

‘Son, you’ll pull time before you hit twenty.’

“At nineteen, I did six months.”

before he could say another word,
drunk people spilled into the room
and the party took over

it was as if the writer
of this dark comedy of errors
had carefully placed
the interruption into the script
for dramatic effect

years later,
I stood in the yard
with my father
one morning

we burned a mattress
in the yard

a mattress with
a peculiar red stain
on the top end of it,
right about where a man
would lay his head down
to sleep

smoke climbed high,
snaking its way through
the bare tree branches,
coating the limbs,
blackening the sun,
giving twisted new meaning
to the wind

with each searing crackle,
each hot little iron
that launched out of the flames,
the notion was solidified
that you would never be
with us again

the red stain
is forever removed,
taken off and away
from the bad blend of cotton
and synthetic fiber

its ugly lack of aesthetic,
permanently removed
from the eye

we have, instead,
embroidered you
into our hearts,
in gold-letter
on satin

a little redirection,
a simple trick
of the firelight
and the mind

a touch of
pre-approved manipulation,
vocabulary and memory,
now twisted
to suit ourselves
with semblances
of sanity

and you, all dressed up,
looking dapper
in a new suit

something to
bring you over
the threshold
in style

we have gathered
many flowers

you were one of them

now, on this rainy Saturday,
we gather more,
but none of them are as rare
or as interesting as you

still, we do so wish
that you were not so

still

now, we are all
so much more careful
with our words

we never had to
monitor our tongues before

we always counted on you
to say something
deliciously profane,
hysterical, sublime

you said things far more terrible
than we could ever manage
(or dare) to bring forth
from our fearful mouths

you said it all for us,
you, being our favorite devil,
you spared no words,
knowing full well that your time
was short

now, everything is
serious and sullen

ash settles on us,
stealing the still-warm
seat of smiles

we do our best
to preserve the integrity
of your memory

with all our words,
so clumsily polite and wrong

yours were so horribly accurate

your list of faults could fill volumes

all of these,
now consumed by fire
and forgetfulness

we will not miss them

we are, in fact, glad
to be free of these;
free from the weight
of your awful acuity

your spiteful condemnation
of this earth was always felt
hot upon our necks

even your parting words of
“Fuck this world!”
were a vicious pronouncement
of a pox on all our houses

that seething sentiment,
ever-present,
laced into the mix
of the cocktail that was you;
virtually indistinguishable
from the indiscriminate joy
of your cosmic jester voice
pouring out over our
wanting brains

we will not miss the
chaos of your actions,
or your allegiance to
an autocratic indifference

we only miss

everything else

but beneath all of the
intolerable heavy,

knowing of nothing else to do…

we dutifully
lift our eyes
to the coming days
where you
are not

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I.

II.

III.

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In loving memory of Jevon Ward

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