Every death,
comes with its particular
novelty.
While birth
plods into life
with sloppy
inaccuracy,
tumbling incoherently
through thick,
sticky afterbirth,
shackled to incomprehension.
Still,
we guess birth
to be miraculous
while it’s endgame,
death
is reviewed as a misfortune
accompanied by a chorus
of “if only’s.”
and the tardy
howls of loss.
But of what good is the marvelous
if you can’t watch?
We are forever
guessing
if we are a song.
Nothing is soundless.
We suspect but are never sure
that our noises carry.
My whistling
may reach Neptune.
But Neptune, like God,
does not echo.
Birds don’t care so much
for their own songs.
They care about eggs
and nests
and the size of baby new wings.
Cicadas lullaby summer evenings.
But the night doesn’t pick up
their theme
and begin to dance.
Flies whizz
their little ditties
by our ears.
And we brush them away,
like eavesdropped insults.
The flowers
exhale their perfumes
into the winds
blinding the dazzled slave bees.
Nothing disturbs the evenhanded blizzard
that is being alive or the drama
of surprising death,
and the odd collisions with love.
She sits among her
snowflake suitors.
All sincere,
Each different,
Each the same
all waiting.
Until she finds
the one
that echoes her song.
Do memories
cast loose
by your life’s end,
wait bewildered
for you
to come back home,
Like pets at windows?
The little lifetimes of first love
All whirling and crashing
about your heart
like hungry snowflakes,
all different
all the same,
till one
does not melt away.
Love is what the battlefield presents to you
after you have vanquished all it’s imposters.
There is only the hum of being alive.
Nothing affects this even handedness.
Certainly not how long you are allowed to sing.
Eternity is a grooved spinning record,
and we go round and round,
forever guessing if we are a song
or simply the melody.
Poetry is the last thing
That would occur to letters
that were mulling around
hunting for something to say.
Words would testify
that gathering to rhyme is
only for holidays.
Good writers are uncomfortable
leaving only a verse,
one that is unsure
of where it’s period might fit in.
But I prefer this short shit,
cause I mostly don’t like
the reader anyway.
He climbs on me at night
to do bug things.
“Remember our first time?”
He whispers
in his mean humming voice
of warm August night locusts.
I come apart.
“Always,” I whimper back to him.
He handsomely smoothes his antennae,
draping them over our pillows,
always the leading man.
“Are you ready to die?”
He hisses, like small talk.
“Yes, I will die.”
I plead.
He is pleased, and I am safe.
It knew I wasn’t going to tell.
I wrapped him in thick brown paper
and ran straight home
and froze my rape.
I could not leave it there.
Not knowing where it was.
At breakfast he asks,
“So what shall we do today?
So casually that I am confused.
He touches my hand,
his carapace hard and unalive.
I try to stop my thumb from caressing his shell.
In small back and forth dread familiarities.
“What would make you happy?” I say
He grins and I exhale.
I told him tonight his grubs live in me.
I feel them clawing for a way out.
Praying daddy longlegs scraping and burrowing for air.
His head on my stomach listening
and whirrs insect songs to them.
I stroke the needle hairs on his back.
I know he loves me.
My deceit holds no estate in him.
I have vanished.
My deceit holds no estate in him.I have vanished
into what has hurt me.
Life forbids I feel nothing at all.
How fun it is
to say again
To repeat the preferred
episodes of my life
over and over.
I remind me
of how wonderful
I have been at times.
Wonderful and happy.
I have had sadnesses,
of course,
but those are now
all by themselves
unnoticed.
There are still the quarrels
in me
over whether time
was wasted .
I think we all have those.
My life is floating timelessly
on the petals of my past.
Memories are all you can ever be.
