Waste

We waste like angels cry,
by which I mean quite often,
and I can’t avert my eyes
from this great tapestry that hangs
down from the rafters.

It is covered in depictions
of a human kind left naked
in the wilderness before
a mountain they must walk
with all the stones around them
cutting up their feet.

It spirals up like that until
at the peak a deer with a tongue
that behaves much like a snake
licks the dew drops off
the leaves of one great tree
that holds the sky up
over everything.

My day there in its shadow
on that white bench someone
dragged there just for me
somehow wouldn’t seep
it’s way out of my mind.
I think about it all the time
no matter what I’m doing.

I can see it in the paint thinner
that is barley even reflective
to begin with and it captures me
like anything with eyes.
I break the door down
to get back to it,

but when I finally burst through
bleeding, there is nothing
but an empty wall, and a janitor
waxing the floor, with his skull
wrapped up headphones
all alone.