Still at War

"Still at War"
the sign said
stencilled on the concrete
where I went over -
still at war
with death and health
with time and mind -
the barrier I vaulted
the clear blue sky
the road the cars the
freefall into
a different skin, breathe-in
breathe-in, silence and slow
motion I turned, mid-air,
stared up, spreadeagled
laid bare
till the hit
and the cars going by
past my ear
thrashing pain,
unconsciousness - I woke
to the war
with the self and the
body
and people
and memory
and time past, time gone,
opportunity lost
and a future devoid
of anything to fill -
I tried to kill
the self, the pain,
the chasm, the
war within, what
was the point of it, the
breath the fit I don't 
fit, the scraped clean,
the barrel bottom,
mind gone, freefall,
in parallel a universe
the fracture no-one can see
the fault lines, the strata,
tectonic plates collide -
black letters
that will never fade
they will be
on my grave
the verse of life
the great divide
the fault of mind and time
of missing and the
letting go:  and no-one
to hold my hand
tears flow but all water
reaches the sea to be
breathed on land and
watered into a turn
of substance and being
of change and diminution.

I remember the
silence of slow motion
of a life that was
before the hit
and all things exploded.

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