By Tommy Cronan.
I was but a helpless witness
to his carcass, coated in crimson
on the brink of temptatious survival
so I’ll drag him by the riverbed
In the misty waters near the meadow
thick carmine flows downstream
he mutters in cold bile, repenting
calling for his mother’s essence
The little boy hiding within
him seeps through abandoned
alters and burrows beneath his
tongue
beating his blood like an ancestral drum
He smears ruby-coated waterfalls
down my lips and through my hair
The pebbles slowly eroding upshore
shimmer in tones of scarlet
I bathe him in the distilling waters
like blue hydrangeas resting in woodland ponds
and through my embracing palms
he is strung centuries high on clouds of light
Armoured wooden sentries weeping
from the ancient veins of earth’s
lifeblood After witnessing the bargaining
agony the blistering scars and open sores
The welting wounds and bruised daggers
the fire singeing his fingertips like old candle
wicks and the dazzling, radiant charcoal
cauterising his exposed muscle
He screams and screams and screams
and in response to his cries, I harmonise
as the ivy tightly woven around his neck
holds him down in untamed captivity
The poor man of flora
is bleeding by the
roses
writhing in pain, eyes bulging
bugs weaving through his flesh
The bell by his grandmother’s door
to call him back in from fields and
farms rings through his mind
reverberating through the dying camouflage
I’ve become a fleetful baptist
to his rattling arms, like amber leaves
dancing through the sunrays
in sparks of searing combustion
The pressure of my grasp
the trembling of my hands
my fingers tugging on old death
his grip is tense, then relaxing
Mother nature falls quiet
as my battle cry echoes
deep within the everlasting willows
tearing at rough bark, ripping at tough skin
His eyes, bloodshot and vacant
his shattering bones blowing like
dust but I’ll seek for every fragment
of him in the ever-changing winds
I’m a child with a butterfly catcher
looking to find all of his broken
pieces
so I can assemble him back
together again a broken puzzle of
youth bathed in disarray
Whispering debilitating prayers
where the river’s iridescent waters flow
for I can still taste the metallic hues
of his hardened blood on my tongue
Marking his tombstone
in bloodshed, razor thorns
engraving floral patterns
over his oxidising, pale
skin
Becoming but an open wound
to all we harness, and what we mourn
so when all that’s left is flesh
he still faces the sun with his petals torn