Of kith and kin

From a distance the coast looks clear...
drawing closer, I choke the tears back.
So many stories have unravelled down the years
and what remains, what's left before me
is the pricking of the thumbs, the needles and pins...
the thinning-out begins
of kith and kin.

Time and tide, all that's washed away,
empty postures and lost connections
to memory's echoes, in the end all that endure
are single words and gestures.
All the stories we've served grow serially thin:
the walls are falling in
on kith and kin.

Witness to the times,
which one of us survives?

Scraped-out pages of scribbled scrawl,
blunted nibs as the devil drives us,
while mere survival makes a mockery of us all
until the last one standing
cracks the code that we're all carrying within,
imprinted on the skin
of kith and kin.

From a distance the coast looks clear,
drawing closer I choke the tears back.
So many stories have unravelled down the years
and what remains, what's left before me
is the pricking of the thumbs, the needles and pins...
the thinning-out begins
of kith and kin.

Witness to the times,
which one of us survives?