storm wall

this is to just write
to get words up against a universe
parceled in onslaughts

one deluge might throw me down
its dark entangled tube, its
empty enticements

i will have spent a lifetime
puzzling, pieces never smiling
or diminishing
reminding, rather, that death's
message has been sent

light broadens
against this fence of words

it is mine and only something i should nurse
work its rows as a deluded path
awkwardly put, lined and jagged

with some imagined
yet mightily empty heft

i lift it, barn of my skull

as if it held back savaging oceans
poised to extinguish me