Sam’s last days
Grotesques. My upper teeth nibble on
the lower. Soon, they’ll be nothing but white ash.
Skin sags. Cartilage wonders why it bothers.
And my eyes… at what stage do they quality
as permanently red. My mouth wants to
swallow my red nose. In one raving gulp
of course, because my bite is busted.
Snow storm outside. So the weather too is collapsing
under its own weight, Maggie is out there somewhere
refilling her pills. Soon enough, it all subsides and
the ground is left looking like this gigantic dead sheep.
But it’s the inside that smells like a carcass.
It’s the thinning hair on the head of a man,
the broken bowstrings of the heart. And the fingers
are like cars skidding on ice, left touch behind
ten years ago.
Insane. My next thought is hammering my last.
My pulse swirls like that witless dancer in the
spiked red shoes. And then it screams loud as a jay.
And then it quiets like the last flakes on the window.
Maggie knows the answer. It’s tiny blue capsules.
The reaper is smug. He scythes with fire-place flame.
Or tries to sell me eyesight on the TV. Or better
bones. Or a stupendous sex life. Since when
was bullshit all I have left to spend my money on.
Wind gives up the ghost though the ghosts are real enough.
Roof is heavy. Front porch is a wasteland.
And there’s Maggie crawling home from the pharmacy.
Needs are served if that’s what you believe.
I’d rather feel every hurt, each twinge, all the footnotes
to my own destruction. Dying ought to be like living.
For if it’s just death, what’s left to humanize.
Story time
It’s a much-anticipated night,
one he can listen to
thanks to a mother bedside,
reading fairy stories,
while he’s tucked under sheets,
having cleared his head
of a father’s discipline over
picked-at despised vegetables
to make room for knights and dragons.
Good and bad
are in the words of others,
can be reimagined
as adventures that,
though fraught with danger,
are assured a happy ending.
And they can lead to dreams
in which a boy wields a sword
far too heavy for his hands
in waking hours.
In fact, it is every night,
as each day is every day,
when hurts are avenged
and not merely felt as pain.
He falls asleep
as the tiny hero faces an angry giant,
confident his sub-conscious
would have him grown in no time.
As it happens
Death happens in a place
where flowers do not grow,
even if seeds are planted
and faithfully watered.
Death happens in a place
where nothing sprouts,
there is no color,
no blooming beauty.
It’s just like death happens
in a town where no one knows you
even though you’ve lived there
ever year of your life.
Death happens in a town
where the band stops playing,
the stores are shuttered,
and the sidewalks crack.
Death happens on a street
when you cry out
but the only response is echo
off the far dark mountains.
Death happens on a street
shrunken from what you remember,
so narrow there’s only room for you,
and only one direction – forward.
Death happens in a place
where bodies are buried,
under six feet of soil
that is also dead.
Death happens in a place
that no one returns from,
a ground colorless, ugly,
despaired of ever blooming.
