I stutter out children’s verses in my Grandparents’ tongue
strung on genealogical trees, the curses of sins
of fathers and wars, cremated kins
of history floating in a sea of blood
angry adolescent words, small scale genocide
back turned and eyes closed
a simple relocation
& once again alone
Eating all ancestors sins to see where I went wrong
the victims’ fearful new faith
repelled my beliefs: my gods and desires died out centuries ago
where has my family gone
children in Poland play
Cossacks and Gypsies
as I join them
is the imaginary blood
we spill
my own
or on my hands
working through recurring problems forever unresolved
old wounds which never heal
the burden of keeping alive impossible dreams
does it benefit me to know how fragile life is
trying to sleep at night
childhood toys become a household shrine
striving toward the phantom cargo of
innocence imaginary past crashing amid isolated
tropical isle sand grain plantation washed into
estuary mangroves– the shipment of memoirs worshiped
and misunderstood
the museum within the mind catalogs
and shelves every minor nuance and the only wisdom
exhibited– dust
gathers together discussing the phenomenological
meaning of time, the cyclic nature which has a grown man
attempt to entertain himself
with the progression of an arachnid traveling
along a waterspout
how not to be bit by the memory
of the fall
going to Las Vegas to play high stakes Solitaire
betting my soul on the next draw
It’s kinda like when you’re drowning
and you gouge out the lifeguard’s eyes
the only land nearby is under thirty feet of water
once you get over breathing, you can stand on solid ground
the freedom of possibilities lifts you away from gravity
the situation of drifting through life keeps a phalanx
of angels stationed at every cliff, lover’s leap
a bungee jump flinging you in the air and
sling-shot back to the abyss
eventually you are left hung by your feet over a gorge
like the Sword of Damocles just waiting
for somebody to pause underneath
climbing the tree
Ragnarok approaches my mind
eternal is before
& birth is over
all remains, a short wait
& trying to return
Yrik-Max Valentonis’s novella 120 Days of Gomorrah is available from Alien Buddha Press. His comics and writings have recently appeared in: Cliterature, Maintenant and Zoomoozophone ; chapbooks: iDEAL and this is visual poetry; anthologies: Alien Buddha’s Block Party, Alien Buddha’s House of Horrors 3, Animal Blessings, Beer-Battered Shrimp for Cognitive Ruminations (forthcoming), Divided Again, Heat the Grease We’re Frying Up Some Poetry, Sinbad and the Winds of Destiny, and Zombie Nation: St. Pete. He earned a BA in English and American Literature from the University of South Florida and a MFA in Poetry & Prose from Naropa University.