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Honest, a Poem












Honest

I imagine you alone in my house
for a day, without binding you to a promise
not to search through angles and nooks, or
through concrete memories filed in haphazard places.

I imagine coming home to you,
a pile of my past on the kitchen table
as you hold up each item without words
asking for a more explained honesty.

You ask of letters, old and grey,
bound with a soft cord and gentle knot.
You ask of pictures of me with her
and others implied by time and space.

You ask of official documents of a younger man,
those things held for required years and more,
in powered fear and presence--
those years that ground the wild from me.

You stop and hold me tight in thanks,
comforted that all I am is open to you.
We read in quiet and look up at times
to bind with sight that closeness we now feel.

And as I fall asleep at night,
With your head on my chest, and an arm around you,
I think of that kitchen table and recall the other
unremembered things found only in dim shadows.

In the darkness of a corner behind the basement stairs,
Sits a  pale and toothless unlit face
seen only in the indirect gaze on the shine of windows
It's  just a bastard of a lonely thing.

You have asked of me my honesty
I can't give it for the worst in me.

Mike Brady
December 2004/2008

Comments

Anonymous said…
I've always loved this one.
xo
Anonymous said…
I just read this again. It's incredibly good. Rockin' good. Start writing poetry again, baby...

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