(Un)Civilized by Christopher Warren

Author:Christopher Warren [Warren, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: poetry, horror, spirituality
Publisher: The Lurking Press
Published: 2023-07-02T07:38:59+00:00

God at the Dinner Table

The lights are low, the night is young,

And all I know is the hunger within these early hours.

A glass of water in my right hand,

I sit at the table

Marveling the stainless steel pot—

Clean from last night.

The sink has run dry for a little while now,

But the bathtub roars with life,

So I fill the pot with water, and marvel at the time.

Sitting in my chair again,

I slice through an onion—

Laughing at the times I lost the knife

And used a spoon instead.

The room is icy in the corner where I sit and work.

The air is stale, sometimes cloying.

I open up the window just a crack sometimes,

But this morning I leave it shut

In anticipation of the warmth of the boiling water.

The slices of onion float in the pot,

Waiting patiently on the range for the crescendo of a boil.

While they sit, I slice a chuck roast into pieces

No smaller than the tip of my thumb.

I used to lose my mind this way,

Sitting in silence, letting the mind wander.

“What an imagination!” I was told as a child,

But no one told me what I already knew—

That the imagination is a curse.

Imagination puts people on the end of a rope—

At the end of a morgue

Where they poke and prod you with sharp metal objects,

Trying to figure out

Just what happened to you.

Imagination

Puts you at the bottom of a pill bottle,

Because the future you imagine

Is so vivid and all-consuming.

Imagination makes your heart stop,

Your soul ache with torment,

Every part of your being

Longing for an escape.

Imagination is a drug

That fails to cure

The disease it has created.

“What an imagination you have!”

I wonder how many survivors

Are out there,

Other than me.

How to create an artistic mind:

Take a normal child

And break him over your knee

With the pain of everything

In this world that is

Undeserved

And unnecessary.

Cut off his legs with neglect

And leave him broken without answers.

The pain and unresolved nature of his life’s story

Will spark a wondrous fire in the mind

That glows bright,

But will eventually

Outburn any

Wildfire.

That fire becomes the child’s existence.

He paints to understand the pain.

He watches the world with nothing to say,

But when all the answers

To the same questions

Do not satisfy,

He pleads for something bolder.

Now you have a child with a weak body,

And a mind

That could burn

New York City to the ground.

A sign on the side of the road states calmly:

“Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death

For children ages 15-17.”

The author of the sign?

A therapy center—

No doubt run by survivors

Of the same mind-searing upbringing.

And many believe the mind

Can be sharpened into a sword,

Or a pen,

Or a needle to stitch up the lost and wounded.

A Swiss army intellect.

But no such thing exists from man alone.

Because as well as you can imagine solutions,

You can twice as easily imagine new problems—

Especially in the early hours.

Especially when the body is restless.

“What an imagination.”

What a thing indeed.

All the same,

As God gave Paul a thorn of torment,

God allows the world to light my mind on fire,

So that when the smoke dies down,

I may see him and understand.

So I may understand the joy of silence.

And already, the beef is done—

Cut and bloody on the board.

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