Saturday, January 28, 2023

Poem: 'Gradual Unravelling' by Alan Lisanti

Gradual Unravelling
by Alan Lisanti


Your seams are bleeding final threads before me
The hottest show in town
The best seats in the house
Spilled into my lap in the front row
What happens when they kill the lights
And cue the curtains
Sometimes you can see your destination
In every blind spot of a winding road
Well now you've welcomed my participation
Broke the fourth wall and we're all biting our tongues, engaged and invested in the situation
It never felt like it, but I had a role
Reciting dialogues to move the story forward
Into a climatic fury so imminent
And apparent
But all warnings were merely figments
Of my paranoid imagination
All signs never put the bitter end
In plain English
Spelled out to my detriment
Spoken slowly...clearly
This, like a monstrous locomotive
Stayed the course fixated on destination
Was a false fire alarm
In an unnamed hotel thought to be vacant
But pyromaniacs have no business
With a heart full of gasoline, pyrotechnics, and matches
It was primed for the barn-burnt finale
Intended as sure-shot liberation
Severance of the frayed strings of puppets
Amputation of a lifelong connection
A dose of purity from flesh that was tainted
A man overboard with one life jacket
That you stowed away in anticipation
I'll swim for the nearest shore surely
Drift in the currents, unbound
Your seams are all but un-threaded
I witnessed the deterioration
I couldn't slow it down
I redirected the doom impending
But I'm just a ripple in your ocean
And all the world's butterflies flap their wings in unison now
The sensation of fingertips slipping
The distance has since grown profound
Suppose then I'll just watch it happen
Helplessly as it goes down

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