SLAPSTICK

Mentors and bourbon and ladders to heaven;

Eight lives lived, this one to go.

Worthy or not, there’s no looking down;

I got 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, iboy, or I’ll drawer you in compost.

In like shrooms

    brooming deep.

Some leftie you turned out to be!

The source of guilt is not giving it all away.

Just try taking it away...

Every territory deeded to “Personal Use Only.”

Was fear on the in-breath? 

Spreading out the tarp, sleeping length 

  across bedrock. The first transparency of H2O:

Our dreams split along a jagged seam.

I loved them both, but I can’t say

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

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 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 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 the 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 always 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 composure
couldn’t be trusted.

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.

Relax!  The moon ladles clouds out of its halo,

and still there is time for your wounds to heal.

            Pray for the starved and cold departed.

            Plead for capable hands,

feeling for reversing the sun’s dementia.         

            Let yourself go; trust the gusting wind

            and the fright outside.