Boy Under a Winter Sun.

i understand some things. even the winter sun brings some warmth.
i have been dragged by hurricanes over distant rocky shores
before i was born and my brain had the word "practice" tattooed
over every square inch of its surface. still i sit behind my apartment
jealously guarding my thoughts, trying to make everyone in the world
know just how desperate and peaceful i am. but my stomach lies. it
doesn't have the appetite, and even the rays of the sun can't fix
what is wrong with it. though my fingers are tired, i throw rocks
looking toward the horizon, the coastline. even in the dead of winter
the sun finds a few hours to shine. makes its appearance and then
sprints from enemy clouds, dodges trees, floats behind mountains
only to reappear again on the other side. it sinks and is re-formed and
and is reborn. even a winter heart knows enough to hurt, and mine does.
it hurts like all the starving people of the world tied together.
though people seem blind, i have a gaze with arms that stretch miles,
a mouth which sucks color from everything I see, spits it out as
cities and homework, bright glass and artificial light. But concrete
cracks at the will of roots and plants, and even such a pale sun
brings a few hours of heat, a few hours of relief from the grim cruelty
of night, or its go-between servants dawn and dusk, winds which scatter
the pages of Divine Comdedies far and wide. covers them with body rot.
swamps and sand dunes cover half the globe it seems. they have a stomach
for modern life i was never granted. my gaze is planted in the past,
in summertime. somewhere a shiny pool of water waits for me. somewhere
a girl in a down jacket and knit hat and mittens smiles and waits for
me. it is her blonde hair i pretend i feel when the creepers and
mud-vines brush my shoulders. somewhere there is a hill where you
can see for miles, and nowhere are there roads or houses or chimney
stacks of industrial might spewing black chaos into the sky. she
will take the hand of some younger version of me, when this dream is
over, and i am clean and good again. when i am no longer under
suspicion, feared and hated, laughed at or pushed aside. she will
take me in her arms and dance me away, to a world where no one
is ever laughed at, or pushed aside, or derided for trying to be a
gentleman. here in the fading sun i pray she waits, and even dying
suns have some light to spare for a lazy dreamer perched upon piled
stones outside a fence by a stream, for someone who was once pushed
and pushed back, who has fallen on hard times, who rests on a bed of
broken glass and wakens to the sound of blood pumping through his
mind. surely even the winter sun has hope it can offer to that kind.