Sending poetry to the world
We are never more rooted
in this big universe than
when our eyes sting and
our heads hang heavy for loss.
When we, a procession of sun
glasses, watch, shifting feet,
as life disappears back into
those thick familiar arms.
Our backs, clothed in black,
savor warmth, unaware that
we are at once joyful and empty,
and crying for ourselves
mirrored in the lowering. How
we know deeply: absence
of something weighs more than
substance, and we fiercely hold on.
Like a king confined
by a future of shackles, i sit in my
big chair and listen, and grieve.
i am burying my brother.
i am burying my child. it matters not,
as i think only of me.
light fades, tightens its grip.
time is my best friend
who accepts such lonely things.
I buried my brother. And now,
the color of the sky has faded and with it
Time has donned a mystical velvet robe. He
wings me about the room like a mad scientist
whose hands are tied with potions and promises;
we were supposed to be
in a future I created full of greenery
and gold light. We were to be tomorrows and
tomorrows long from now.
His wand swirls round, stirring stars to wake. Another
day is over, and so ends this illusion.
I bury my head in my hands
and cry into soft fabric folds of his gentle gown.
late hour, woozy with memories
that one adam says are ghosts.
how right he is, adams are vapor.
as are bens and jons
and young shadowy men
drinking too much,
driving too fast.
one adam wraps around a tree before i can tell him
anything, how i have a photo of him with birthday cake
poised waiting on his bottom lip for a sugary kiss
my god, we could have been anything by now
if we weren’t spread out across the sky, still waiting
on kisses from little girls like
dew-tipped grass in a morning chilly, ripe.
wearing a dress of the dead, lipstick just a shade deeper than yesterday’s
wear, my hair is longer, eyes lined blue, mind sharp, i have never felt such cathexis
for a polyester blend, it is she in my memory choosing this white clutch, she reminding
me of such joy in life with each swish of the bell of such brightly flowered dress,
she decorating all of me and preening like a grave site of daisies in fresh morning spring.
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