The Game
By: Jurri Saddler Jr.
Written: 04 Sept 2014
My memory has a tendency to make shadows
Blacking out things that I used to know
I can see experience flee and contort
Like a maze with no end, out of sorts
Last night my fingers fell wildly stale
Over written memories that fatally fail
To inspire emotion from a stalled state
There is no chance to resuscitate
Words meant to light up our connection
A stoic friendship meant for detection
Yet signed platitudes are hard to decipher
Bonds diminished by life’s accidental sniper
When heat spills on books meant to chill time
A side effect in a mind prone to decline
Recollections, like steam, tend to evaporate
The structure of brain much weaker than slate
So I cling to eyes for some solid foundation
Reminding myself of our joint creation
But I know that time is fond of the game
With ubiquity of people, recognition is maimed
When flecks of soul flush my eyes From memories that careen as climes I willingly prime myself to be pricked By images and sounds detained in fragments
Such as a giggle that provokes skies to brew Housed within the boy that I call nephew As my age acts as time’s rapture Calm can be leeched from that laughter
Or the way I paddle through smoke tinged ease From the awe that heats the face of my niece It’s in these flashes I wish time’s hand would cripple Loosening its grip on a heart that’s fickle
It pushes me to times we hid beyond neighborhood lights Siblings and friends breathing as night It is had to believe we felt so safe In a world where innocence is readily chafed
So I let the fragments collect and glare Aware that newer ones hold less flare Value found even without intensity Can one compete with the storms of infancy
However in the hour when joy is procured And distance among minds are abjured Our hearts and souls chain as links Friendships strengthen in that of a blink
Or how my feet matched those of foreign soil The texture of hands that made my heart boil Lifting me to join a night’s dreamscape It was the only moment I trusted fate
Even the nights our eyes became words Caffeine-infected, the hours naturally blurred There was always some exam we had to ace Between fact and fiction our stress erased
Despite how the fragments flow into heaps I sift for the vibrant, desperate to cling Finding truth in the tone of what’s said Water won’t flow against bonds that are bred
Which is why ear favor tribal volumes Hooking to sounds that can pigmentize rooms Of cousins so tight we act as latches Especially on our nights, we burn as matches
Or when conversations splinter then bind Like chaos dancing in a torpid mind Our restless banter acts as masquerade The gibberish of siblings kept in shade
And how can I forget where refuge is formed Shaking off the stress that is commonly worn With a grandmother composed with an anchor’s soul In a world of diamonds, she made me more than coal
So I will clutch to fragments hoping they don’t diminish Afraid they’ll vacate before my finish It’s my memories that cold dementia wants to take Without them how will my heart continue to quake
Jurri J 