SLAPSTICK

Mentors and bourbon and ladders to heaven;

Eight lives lived, this one to go.

 

Worthy or not, there’s no looking down;

I had a target tattooed on my back.

SHOULD YOU WANT A SHAWL FOR THE NIGHT

Should you want a shawl for the night

(As the temperature drops, and your foot measures light)

Where better to retire, than to a forest floor?

“Unto thee I bequeath my decomposition.”

- Laugh it off, oh boy, or I’ll drawer you in compost.

In like shrooms

    brooming deep.

Some leftie you turned out to be!

Guilt sourced from not giving it all away.

Just try taking it away...

Every territory deeded to “Personal Use Only.”

Does fear come in on the in-breath? 

Spreading out the tarp, lengthening sleep 

  across bedrock. The first transparency of H2O:

Our dreams split along a jagged seam.

I enjoyed them halved, but I couldn't tell

If we were singing "harakiri" or “Hare Krishna.”

The trees had grown taller overnight

and moved closer together.  

Arose from the dank place of pain in your chest,

a charitable hue of greeting.  

1.24.2020

for Michael Chorney

POEM, written with Michael David Jewell

Days, weeks, sometimes years by, 

when challenged to "feel the love”

clouds will draw us from sky

into the presence of ritual’s refuge. 

Time-lapse becomes a moment of stillness. 

We cut up pieces of bread 

to toss out in the snow for birds 

hunkered down in the hedge.

Their chirps off the old block.

A QUESTION OF VOCABULARY

He was talking to himself again.
What was he saying?
The words that came out of his mouth
registered no meaning,
as if his thoughts had been translated
onto a foreign tongue.

THE COMMUNICATION

You said the poem was spectacular

then let me know

you would be going home

once more.

Your body’s failing strength

left only its mind's

clarity for you to return with,

which you did, offering

its spaciousness to others.

At the transfer station,

everyone clings to you,
but you no longer cling to anything

while everything about you
points beyond –

to the Mother's final solstice

and her pairing of two cardinals.

I see the female first;

swooping in at my window

under the porch roof,

hovering mid-flight.

Then the exchange:

its mate, melodious,

his red head – the color of ribbon –

poking out

from inside the center

of the Christmas wreath,

not to be removed, not yet.

Spring snows would fall,

and over the mountain

at Mad River Glen

I would drive past skiers

and cars with out-of-state plates,

as if shaving my face

for the first time in a month.

for Kathy Eldergill

1953-2017

INTERROGATION

What’s in the head

with the library?

More than a corpse.

Words meander

over circuits of breath;

a shade moves

up, then down.

Are you naked?

Stepping out from the shower,

a ghost hitches up its scars.

Talk, damn you!

Once upon a time
our eyes closed

in tandem, in silence.

THE SPECIMEN WORLD

A rifle shot comes

from the direction of Main Street,

but the sounding doves outside

the bedroom aren’t startled,

and the noise of traffic

hasn’t stopped.

I should pull the window shade up,

let in the eye-riveting light,

call again for help

from one of the strangers

who moved in.

The darlings keep busy.

They must be struggling

to make sense of the laundry

hung out to dry on the porch.

I will give the sheets names

for when it gets dark,

and give them a piece of my mind, too,

for their flirty bedevilment.

I’ve always known my husband
couldn’t be trusted.

He has hidden their letters from me,

in the magazines and books

left lying about.

I tear off their pages

and make my rounds,

scattering tiny piles of ripped up paper

like bird seed, throughout the house.

POEM OF DEPARTURE

            Let yourself go: mourn in the evening,

            with your curtains pulled open and your lights turned on;

Wail, from dusk to daybreak, straying across your neighbor’s yard.

Go into the hedgerow, safe for a blind bird’s sleep.

Look!  The moon ladles diamonds over clouds,

and still there is time for your wounds to heal.

            Pray for the starved and cold departed.

            Plead for capable hands,

feeling to reverse the sun’s dementia.         

            Let yourself go; trust the gusting wind

            and the window's elbow.