--I WISH I HAD A RIVER I COULD SKATE AWAY ON

 

 

 Demons on the Clothesline

 All my other selves are hanging on the clothesline

The thin ones, the sour, the sin-stained,
The bloody awful red ones
The sun looks away and the wind screeches to a halt
A pair of children wonder what to make of it
Raising a tree branch they treat me like a piñata
When nothing falls, they get a can of gasoline
And spritz my feet and calves, light a match
As the flames lick, I smolder black and tarry
There is no tortured screaming
I watch it all, sighing, thinking perhaps
It is finished

 

Shattered

Your allergies are acting up again

It’s the pollen or the way the water warps
In the drinking glass you shatter in the sink
Meds can take the edge off, smooth a few sharp corners
But there are days and nights when volcanoes spew
Their lava down your throat and suffocation
Seems like a very real possibility
So under the bridge you go
The sound of the cars overhead a kind of
Auditory waterboarding
Peace is a slippery distance
And the demons are never satiated
If you could just come home
If we could just talk for once
Like father and son
Or friend to friend
We might forge a footprint
Cut down the weeds and detritus
And carve a way back to the beginning
 

 

Somnambulism

Alone again, you find yourself without ribs

Your heart hanging loose by a bloody tendril
The moon mocks you while
Stars form a bejeweled noose
You hear your mother’s ancient instruction
This is how we pick ourselves up
And so you walk to the window
To the lake
To the shore
Where the water accepts you as you are
Because what other choice does it have?
You float in an uneven eddy
Twirling in stilted patterns
Moonbeams striping your face
While galaxies expand for no other reason than
That they can
Seconds pass, minutes, too
And you as well
One with the unsteady current
A soggy carcass never so sad
Hoping to float to a new world
Where things bloom and can be resurrected

 

This Lonely

When the marauders come for you

There is nothing left to steal
Cornmeal perhaps, or stale bread
And still you are so lonesome that
You offer yourself as a proxy.
Take me, you say.
One bandit looks to the other
Then glances away
Before leaving without a word
Through the back door
You converse with the mirror
With a reflection in the window
With anything that might resemble
A friend

 

Lazarus Is Up

Lazarus is up.

He looks dehydrated,
but that’s to be expected from a corpse.
He asks who all cried, who all cared,
writing down every name I tell him.
What I don’t say is that I wish he’d stayed dead,
that sometimes what’s done is done,
no tricks allowed,
mortality making meaning out of death.