One Less Thing for God and Me to See

"One Less Thing for God and Me to See"
I watch vast movements of wind
     cut wide slices of blue sky
          between the cotton like fluff floating above,

Glimmers of past summers
overlay the present
painting reminiscent pictures
for me,

These places
hold a glint of memory
     in my eyes,

Seeing the tall golden grass
beyond the railroad tracks again,
Remembering when
     we waved around sticks
     aimlessly cutting away
     wide swathes of grass,
Rode our bikes
through crooked gravel roads,
Threw rocks
through cracked abandoned windows
     and stomped on broken glass,
Danced
     and laughed
          and ran
through the hollow remains
of buildings no longer alive,

We hopped over the crumbled pieces
     in blissful innocence,
Ignorant
     of what
     we would leave behind,

I never thought
I would be back here like this,
The twisted and contorted pictures of my gnarled world
before my eyes
have unraveled
into the very words
that my mind has painted alive,

These days my blood stained eyes
     hold weary the wear of the day
     and gaze out to the blur
in between my face and the vacant space before me,

My memory dances and hops and runs through me
like
I'm some kind of
     Broken down
          Crumbling building,
The world doesn't want to see me,

It's clear it's all gone and I hate how these tears feel,

So line after line
I snort obscurity straight to my brain
where all I remember fades
     And only irrelevance stays,
It's a place blessed,
One less thing for god and me to see,
I know now I'll be there soon,
But for now I ride the high
     and sway off the walls
          and fall upward toward the heavens
as my eyes roll backward,
I hang my head back again
     and find that place again
          where I can forget
               and do this all over again.
I'm not immune,
I know now
     I'll be there soon.
-Armando Torres