Sling Blade

Sling Blade

In the damp hush of a West‑Cottage lane,
he trades the iron wire for a quiet whisper,
the brush‑stroked soul of a town that never learns to mend
the bruised heart that clings to memory like a scarred twig.

His fingers ache for the sound of a forest axe,
yet the only echo that meets him is the slap of a life
foreshadowed by a blade that hums under the deck of cracked wind.

A lanky silhouette, broken and tender as a child’s plague,
he walks the streets of Old Town in the same measured pace
as a man who keeps his face chalk‑white to hide the dust.

In the frightened loaf of alder and rusted lime, he finds
a saving post: a teaching class that lasts the night,
a strange mandolin humming, a girl with moth‑eyed innocence.

Books flare, paper cracks, tongues promising futures—
but the world, stubborn and unrelenting, turns the old man
into a creature of stone, a reminder that walls rise quickly.

His razor‑cut skies turn to burnt‑gold sunsets,
where the line between hero and monster blurs in the dark;
The blade, once a singer of silence, is caught in a trance—
slinging its presence through a life that will never return.

Later, he learns, in a quiet skate of grief, that the thing
trembled when the churches wept, that the eyes of the world
are cold with unsteady hope.

And a blade can swing free once in a dream—
the colour of the mist that wakes him;
He re‑reminds himself that to weep is to live,
so he takes his own weight and finds the softly spun threads of a good night.