Cashed
David E. Oprava, July 2009
I am spent,
mostly by myself,
although best lied to
plans played a part.
For years I’ve been
picking at the hem
of my skin, slowly
scaling it’s better days
never thinking that once
undone, that’s the way
it stays, pieces once
sewn together in place
where they were born,
some stay, others visit,
but it’s been so long
I’ve lost the way back,
my skin once knew,
it’s youthful grin
before the stains,
its handsome hair
when there was still
some there, and a rosy
bloom that then drew
closer to grey
whilst I was busy
building a grand
façade to daydreams,
I called it anticipation,
expectation, deserved
reconciliation, but really
underneath it was
the flesh of folly,
how quickly the baby
fat goes down to the bone,
such poking pillows
under a balding pate
and now, that monolith
I began so long ago
has come down
to the modest mole
hill of me, it’s cramped
and closing down,
business done
for the day and the till
cashed out to sleep
on the lumpy couch,
and wait for inevitable
collectors.
Note: David E. Oprava is also a contributor in MiCrow Summer “Peek”.
David E. Oprava writes, because he has to. He is terrified of what
will happen otherwise. It makes him prolific. He has been in over
sixty journals online and in print and his first full-length book of
poems VS. was released in October 2008 by Erbacce Press. He is also the founding editor of the tiny poetry press, Grievous Jones. When he isn’t writing he is battling against his raging sobriety and trying to live up to the high moral expectations of husbandhood, fatherhood, and humanhood. Not necessarily in that order and not necessarily succeeding.
