“Venetian Doorway” by Mari French
looms a doorway
that leads unto where
no one certainly knows
to approach it
requires blind faith in
the secular scripture
of unconscious memory
history fallen to scythes
it requires that faith
or the motherless hope
that the scarified legs
who have pushed upon paths
through past portals
to demophobe suffering
this time will somehow
safe carry away from
the clamoring silence
of unliving voices unnerving
insistent with praise
for the terrified solitude
dead in the midst
of the crowd
