Thursday, November 24, 2011

Before the Shadow

After a 2011 Tartus Port poured into my goblet I drank deep as Tartarus.
Dread rolled past my tongue, causing my lungs to shiver as from a winter breeze or the teasing touch of fingertips cold as bone.
I swallowed lamentation, silently gagging on the smell of iron, smoke, and charred meat.
The festive feast on our long table is festooned with the silence of men who left too immediately for an awareness of their departure to appear.
Intelligent gossip slides from derisive lips and hides its' hushed meaning in the seams of this eternal campaign season.
The words are smeared with din and quite like smokeless fire unraveling the matter it travels through.
I can not make out the words but I recognize the tone ringing through me in a shudder-inducing cacophony: contempt.
Waves rise in invisible tides through us.
They share the flavor of the wine we're served, recognizable from its' aftertaste of massacre.