The Cold Reality

Poem by Adam Crawford

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There’s just not enough people in the world
to keep everyone company, always.
Some just have to deal with it for a time:
cold as winter birds at the circle’s edge.
The omni-social warmth gets reserved first
for everyone with the gifts to earn it
easiest; who – as to be expected –
having been spoiled by the heartbeat for
as long as memory necessitates,
forget to take turns; and the ungifted,
their wait in the frost extended into
Antarctic years bleeding ever whiter,
feel that continental waiting shift and
their icy horizons crack like glaciers.
Deprived of a break, they fracture and days
become image-split and time-stuttering –
consciousness: kaleidoscopic to it’s
very edges and impossible to
remove from the eye’s sight, even by the
resolve of suicide. The arching bells
that blot the transparent lenses with black,
shallow, un-departing, escape-shaven
coats of painful, experiential fact
toll more truly than those of the heartbeat’s
uninterrupted embrace will – or can –
or would ever want to take it upon
themselves to know – let alone try to help.

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Adam Crawford is a writer of poems and short stories. His work has been published by Ink Babies Lit Mag, Poetic Anarchy Press, and The Pomegranate London. He lives in Simi Valley, California.