Draft of, Elderly Rainbows, from a future project tentatively titled, “Dampness”

Elderly Rainbows By Jasen Sousa

 

He desired to shape concepts into objects

unknown by man.  Instead, that which bubbled

inside his head transformed into dented

cans that looters wouldn't bring back

to their sacred land.

 

He wondered how to mold abstract ideas

into something concrete that would serve as foundation

for cities and paved streets. Instead they sat, untouched

by human hands like sand on winter beaches.

 

He hoped for something specific, like tales

written on wooden ship sails, memorized

by the Atlantic and Pacific.  But it's like

he never existed, slept in the same house

that became empty as the gambler's account.

 

His growth rested underneath barriers

of skin and pleasure like lawns

buried underneath frozen leaves and snow.

His desires sat like used cars with

fog on their windshields and a slight drizzle

on their frames, as brush grew along

sagging fences weighed down

by the poet's unwritten sentences.

 

He wanted to find a way to bottle rainbows

in oil-slicked puddles, before they disappeared

like eyeglass dents on the elderly man's nose,

before it was too late to notice what he swept away.