Soiled Sheets

Observation.

Bed covers of another kind,

Where no amount of washing

Removes the stains of pain

Cried into the frayed cotton threads.

How comfortable they try to appear

Crumpled up in a room of no windows.

Stare they must

Down the walls of peeling wallpaper

To the sheets’ constant companions…

The flies in aerial dogfighting mode

From pillow to cover sheet,

Cover sheet to bedpost,

Bedpost to errors of judgment,

Zooming upward to the cracks in the ceiling

Only to make themselves the next meal for a spider in wait,

Salivating behind its woven corner lair of silken traps.

Even as fatigue is your worst enemy,

You attempt to bed down,

Still clothed as insulation against the soiled sheets.

Not even the rasp of rusty springs

Can cover such noise from the adjoining room.

The body-on-body slippery shrieks,

Like the tectonic rubbing of emotional plates

Grasping for the moment of sweet indolence,

A faineancy of truth,

Following carnal pleasures

When the beggarly of hearts

Assumes happiness is guaranteed forever.

Coming of age…

Is often of like fingernails across a blackboard.

Momentary but oh so impactful,

Like a tattoo of reality,

An introduction to what would be left behind,

Never to be forgotten.

Such was the New York initiation

Of a soon-to-be

Mountain-Prairie starving artist.