"Into the Morning" by David Hay

Language falls from the sky,

As my eyes, fleshly opened,

After two days

Drinking straight,

Lungs full of the black weeds of time,

Strangling notes like newborns,

Their limbs leak water, like spiders out of the Sides of my mouth

Until it tenderly covers my mother’s skin,

Encrusted with layers of human ash,

Watered by tears

Fallen - Falling forever.

Sparrows line my legs

And speak the sky into my ears,

I have no time to lie in limbo,

Suckling the stale air like milkshake

Flavoured by my dreams - My nightmares

Beatific in ritualistic despair

No, my eyes roll back

To rest in the womb of the skull

Until my limbs dissolve into the dirt

Every wrinkle flattens out

Into the body of the earth.

I am a seamstress who

Stitches together the torn skies

Into the shut mouth of my father.

Lightning blooms painfully

Through the cracks in the night's surface,

Before being dragged down by god’s tears

To birth the morning into my eyes,

Heavy with our memories,

Projected into the cemetery of our skulls,

Our years seem nothing now.

David Hay is an English Teacher in the Northwest of England. He has written poetry and prose since the age of 18 when he discovered Virginia Woolf's The Waves and the poetry of John Keats. These and other artists encouraged him to seek his own poetic voice. He has currently been accepted for publication in Dreich, Abridged, Acumen, The Honest Ulsterman, The Dawntreader, Versification, The Babel Tower Notice Board, The Stone of Madness Press, The Fortnightly Review, The Lake, Selcouth Station, GreenInk Poetry, Dodging the Rain, Seventh Quarry and Expat-Press. His debut publication is the Brexit-inspired prose-poem Doctor Lazarus published by Alien Buddha Press 2021.