Gone, Gone

This pinwheel of death-songs,
For now it’s the outer ring
I wouldn’t even go to their funerals.
But as the days go the scythe
Will get ever closer still: it took my father
When I was 25. Then uncles, then
George. Soon it’ll come for my mother, my
Mentors, my friends. This play’s
Cast a dwindling attrition, until by the end
It’s a single act, ten minutes from start
To finish, and I will have to choose my words
The engine of my last breath
Very, very carefully, and someone will say
(as I said this morning):
We met before, but we didn’t know each other,
Because everyone else is gone,
Gone.

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Forget-me-not

Beyond the bric-a-brac lay
Hope drained from a concrete world
As milk from a coconut:
We drink without taste
Breathe without air.
How to ask for what we need?
To sit the ugly on the cushion
And pour it tea?
Tell me of the waves of moments
Crashing blind against this coast of forgetting
Where the brine swells the tongue
And fields burn the wind black
It is not, I contend, too hard
Or doe-eyed to ask
How to get back to the future
Of our long vanished dreams,
To demand the return
Of places we’ve never walked
Seas we’ve never swum.
Give it back,
I want to know it all again
For the first time.

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Rounds

In this, the dregs of light we
Operate as if tied to a table, asking
When is our next vacation, how
High must we jump to eclipse
Humming office lights, hands
Begging for supper, warmed
While outside men shout the up
Sides, mourn the downsides,
Imperfect, front is impossible
Without the back, the heart
Beats without permission,
The lungs bleat
And we wake up tomorrow
For another round.

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Blisters

No sense in brooding,
scooping hurt in the desert
of the palm. Better to cup
the sun, accept the burns.
We name our blisters show
them proudly, fortunes of
survival, bliss-throated,
shouters at the sky.

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