Something Sharp

The scoreboard at the baseball game
is shorting out while the grass
is being ripped up by the storm.
The backyard is a panopticon
of houses without fences in between them,
and a gazebo in the center looking out.
This is the definition of a nightmare
looking back at you from the doorway.
Something sharp you didn’t think
could get a piece of you.
Broken chandeliers no longer clear
are out the window now
and lay in fragments of themselves
without a chain to hold them higher
than the blacktop.
The line of trees where the valley
becomes a forest looks like chewed up
fresh tobacco and the darkness
in between the leaves is everything
imagined going wrong.
I am the eyes so bright within
those gaps tracing over all the heart attacks
and breaking branches under footholds
falling down.
Then there is dancing and loud music
all around us in our nervous
overcrowding of the weak
that leads to those left on the edge
who aren’t afraid to speak
of all that we’ve forgotten.
All the apples on the tree
are always rotten when
you cut them to the core,
so we cut it down,
and broke it into more.