Rimbaud
       

How the doors of the stone
house bang forever, never shut.
Ruined in a month In a bare
white room where the sun
inches through the broken window.
How withdrawal and abjection
stun my body, skin crawling
like the rusted back teeth
of an old handsaw. How Rimbaud
ran through the jungle at night, seeing
all, vines smacking his cheeks
while leeches housed
and sucked underneath his wet
clinging pants. Forgotten black
hyacinth My mother wrote me
the same letter for a year while
I was trapped in Lorain, Ohio, wearing
an issued blue uniform. She said
I am getting old.
She said the house is falling
The walls move, she said, in the middle
of the night, and I swear I
put the lamp there then it was gone
I write to no one:
I made it out alive, finally. The walls
either move or sit still, always where
they're supposed to be. I sing
quietly in the leech-black night. Running
and running, like Rimbaud, eyes wide
open, everything in front of me.

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Copyright © 2020 Charles Kell All rights reserved
from Cage of Lit Glass
Autumn House Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission