dead thing under the pier
i would mourn your passing
if you would identify yourself
you resemble an alligator
(but if so, you are far from home)
or some small, desiccated
formerly scaled dinosaur
washed up on the beach
luring my dogs under
the boardwalk
to roll in you
you are missed
ancient, stinking friend
and we are not so much
separated by millions of years
of evolution
as we are by a length of leash
and two lungs full
of salt water
Tag: dead
your fourth dead body (20180521)
your fourth dead body
lies in state on sunday
on pillars before a home
a house on a busy main street
still sleepy on sunday afternoon
not a funeral home
just a house and no crowd of mourners
but three modestly
well-dressed people
gathered behind the coffin
it’s a few blocks
from that taco shop you want to try
post obedience
involuntary body viewing
the second time
you have been surprised
by a corpse
the grass is green
cut short at the house
clouds part by the hand of god
like god is karate chopping the sky
the opening reveals a sky bluer
than the ache that
lives in your bones
creates a vacuum
the clouds refuse to rush back in
instead the heavens suck the air
out of your lungs
you are too far away to see details
of the face
but the sun reflects
off a brown forehead
you can smell pomade
thick massaged into black
permanently styled hair
what you took for beads of sweat
is mortician’s wax
pilling on skin
that will not ever sweat
you have stopped breathing
your breath has fled
like a soul on the lam
a police car pulls up to the curb
maybe to ask
why they have a body on their lawn
why the casket is open
why the corpse is sweating
why can you smell it
why are cops who have gathered
around the corner
laughing with each other
like one just told a joke
traffic lets you move
and you breathe
and the body in the casket
does not
an impromptu visitation (20170517)
i hear a rustling
like dried leaves
caught in a hot wind
coming from the spare room
i surprise my father
in the act of changing clothes
though silent
he seems angry
mouth clenched closed
like a vise
eyes squinting in judgment
you know you’re dead, right?
next year
he will be one hundred years old
and has been haunting me
from house to house for almost
a quarter of that century
both he and the clothes
are transparent
and when i remind of
of his non-corporeal state
he loses the angry look
though burly in life
he shrugs his grave-thin shoulders
fades away
with the sound of a brittle page
of an old book being turned
lead zen (20170307)
good god
i am filled with lead
not the hot lead
you would expect
being slung around
by cagney or bogart
but the kind that
fills the blood
coagulates it like venom
presses down on the muscles
demands your eyes to close
and you you want to say
yes
poorly written (20161118)
i dreamed once
that my parents
[both dead]
were alive again
and reconciled
and living in a
large house
even the
dream me knew
this fiction
poorly written
and all i wanted
was to
wake up
there was no
longing for home
just the need
to get away
from the lie
of it all
Poem 20150711
the lump is solid and dead and wet
when you unsack it
you don’t even pull it out
just let it slide out on its own
gravity does the dirty work
you just guide with with your hands
watch it impale itself on a wooden stake
not that it has a heart
not yet
and you hear it separate from its skin
which you reserve
the peeling off of skin
the baring of red flesh not yet alive
after all, this is eden
you haven’t breathed life into it
not yet
as you take it apart
cutting with wire and knives and fingers
you save the pieces for later
keeping the bits in the old skin
keeping them wet because when they dry,
they are useless shards
Words and Feathers 