The Past Prison

This wretched, dead thing
Dangling, dragging behind me.
Weighted down by the damage
and deep scars 
of years,
hurt scabbed over...

Never fully healing,
Never really having a reaping
in the soul.
This thick, shired, cut up life,
Dense beneath my feet.
Wet with my own tears, mud like
and new...

Holding my heart down,
like lighter notes 
underneath the strength of musk.
And, I stood in a place
And, I sank,
fell down under some altar of you
that I created time-well,
but full of esteemed regret,
some heavy, burdened life
pulling at my shoulders,
keeping me in the thud of this mud.

I wanted forward,
to a place where this life 
had something for me.
But, this heavy dead, dangling past life 
held me here,
riddled with illusions
of comfort...

But, whole views 
of mirror things
told different stories.
Tales of illegitimacy in ruin
and trusts that were shallow 
and empty.

And, I fell underneath
the weight of it,
that dead, dangling past life
that was here
and full
and consuming.

I accepted it.
And, I lay there underneath
it's burdened weight.

I closed my eyes,
breathing in and out
a release of relent.

Jason Christopher Johnson 
November 23, 2012

The Ghosts of You...

When did the halls here become footfalls for your memory,
Whisper things and shadows, and all the remnants
of your face unseen?

Like some summer/time day that crested easily into night,
The line crossed that no one saw,
The missing timbre of your voice,
No hem to my haw.

When did the faults of echoes blur into one haunting scream,
Breathing just to taunt, torment
All the hope and promise that once did live here?

When did your eyes lose their shine,
Like suns wrestling against the cover of clouds,
The dust of stars falling from a night's sky.

Your voice,
Doesn't calm,
Doesn't sound of peace like it used to.
Your hand,
Doesn't soothe,
It's not gentle anymore,
Bruises in the home/place,
Holes in panels of doors,
Shaking, earthquake things.

And, we lived in these haunted walls,
Dancing around you and your many moods,
Eggshells scattered about,
Like fragments of days gone by,
Cracked and hopeless,
Fragile and ruined.

When did your heart pulse leave, give out, give up
Like the runner who believes he's lost the race,
The model who can no longer give face?

When did you decide my love wasn't enough,
that everything outside was better than the within.

When did the happiness all become a simple fit,
choosing to turn to the chaos of some dark,
hapless, world.

When did the peacetime yield to turmoil,
a choice we both made.

When did your heart stop beating anew,
When will you return,
And, we can be rid of these simple,
ghosts of you?

Jason Christopher Johnson
November 19, 2012