Quake
By: Jurri Saddler Jr.
08 August 2014

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