no hallelujahs anywhere
by Allen Seward
I’m sorry to say that I
have no hallelujahs for you
and I haven’t had a single one
since
my high school days
those strange days
back then
in those days
like that
there were hallelujahs everywhere
you couldn’t step outside without
seeing one
or getting hit by one
you couldn’t back out of the driveway
without running one over
but that was way back then
in that strange past
when I was trained for just that
to see hallelujahs everywhere
but that was way back then
and I haven’t seen any since,
thank
God.
no more words
no more bit fingertips,
no more cut wrists.
if these rivers wish to be free
then I
will piss them out
and smile as I flush it all down the drain.
it is time for a great change.
this has done me no good
and frankly I can’t stand it.
I wish to put it all away
and never look at it again.
there you have it.
no more.
no more words. it is finished. kaput.
let the silence and empty space take me.
so be it.
no more fingertips. no more wrists.
no more rivers. no more words.
poking the happy side of life
ready yourself for the barrage
of stone
of glass
of arrow
of bullet
of knife,
ready-or-not, they do not care,
the order has come down
and you have been found guilty
or near-enough to be guilty,
adjacent, parallel,
it does not matter,
the balloon will pop
and no longer be a balloon
and spill everywhere
and not be cleaned up
and scraps will blow with the wind
and the rest will dry,
ready yourself,
you have been adjacent to meaning
for your entire life, parallel to it,
near-enough but not touching,
you have intersected with nothing,
and yet here it comes,
summer is over,
ready yourself.
complex
it has not been made clear and no one asked
so (technically) no one has told a lie
but the truth of the matter is that something is missing
that was once here but no one got a good look at it
or heard it make a sound so it cannot be identified
though it can be missed (the whole world felt it
at least for an instant) so we bowed ourselves to it
subjecting entirely and then we denied it
swearing up-and-down it did not exist (and never did)
until finally we resigned ourselves to accepting
that things gone stay gone and we
will never know absolutely everything there is to know
or even a fraction of it (at least that is
what I would like to say but if you’ve ever spoken to
another person then you know we are still clawing
at our flesh and killing each other over
interpretations of something we’ve never known).
BIO
Allen Seward is a poet from the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. His work has appeared in Scapegoat Review, Bitter Melon Review, and Chewers, among others. He currently resides in WV with his partner and five cats.
@AllenSeward1 on Twitter, @allenseward0 on Instagram
