dead end

it was small of me, again,
to have knotted and spun all these
itchy red yarns (i should have known)
in the same autumn/winter wind that i’ve pegged for
pain the more painful behind private eyes, now
my poem cast, black on black, notes carved into
transparent stone,
the ink chips that echo a cascading descent and just
mad tinkling fragments that will never be born. so
loneliness is strength again as the forecast
calls for snow: i’ve managed just
another recourse to
the same old mantra’s end.
here we flip like postwar pages,
hearth-huddled, tattered for the warmth—
a company of miserymen and our cities in the earth
(i really should have known).