Dawnless
by Benajah
(2019)

Dawn in New Iberia has
four lines of fire of mire
a’ dat hurricane seem to me as cloud of spoonbills
wallowing in the bad waters, ah the water, brackish

Dawn in Angola groans
St Francisville has no gargantuan well-lit spaces

No escapes
incisive betwixt the slants
for tankards of ambergris of pressganged affliction is

              Nothing but a mirage

No dawn arrives and no one receives it, neither breath nor sense
because daybreak and hope are not
Less upon occasion the uncompromising swarming glow overtake
“penetrate like drills and devour abandoned children.”

“Those who got out early know in their bones
there will be no paradise or loves that bloom and die;
they know they will be mired in numbers and laws,
in mindless games, in fruitless labors.”

The light is buried beneath chains self-formed link by link

And carry them for e’re
an anti-sight, anti-sound
As my throngs’ lurch sleeplessly through the Cyprus
“as if they had just escaped a shipwreck of blood.”https://theprose.com/BloodforInk

https://BloodforInk.com