MICHAEL DENNIS MOONEY -- new writings

September 12th, early a.m. hours

I am searching for you
Under the ash, the debris,

The collapsed edifice
Of your anxious defenses,

Scattered to bits,
Blown down on the winds.

I find only shards and artifacts of you.
I want to give up the search.


II.
My memory of you
Is shattered glass in the dark.

A torn shoe in the dust,
I imagine your fleeing step.

A ring sheared in half,
I see your hand reaching the door.

A blank check, I make it out
To me and sign your name.

An appointment book, rifled by wind,
In the jumbled mess on the ground,

I note with bitterness
It lists the hundred ways

You distract yourself from your life.
I want to give up the search.

What is so important
About any of these things now?


III.
I am searching for you
But there is no you here,

Only indications of you,
And I want to give up.

(Some things don't change,
That's how you were before.)

There are signs you might hear my voice
Calling down into the gaps in the rubble,

But you cannot find
The consciousness to respond.

I know you're wearing your beeper,
Carrying your phone.

But you are out of service.
I think I hear moans.

I want to think I hear you,
But I want to give up the search.


IV.
There are hangers-on here
Concocting urban legends

Of lives intact in a
Basement under the rubble!

They claim to have been
In contact with the missing,

Yet they have been proven to be liars.

They need to believe
They work in a heroic cause,

But they are just picking through the trash here.

I know I will not find you have survived.
I want to give up, I am so tired.




V.
I think you might hear
My shoes treading the planks

Across treacherous fields
Of wreckage in the rain.

I am shining my flashlight
Down between the boards

Into the cavernous, unanswering dark.
I am screaming your name.

I beg you to save me,
Though I purport to rescue,

I beg you to save me from this loss.


[2001]