Genius

Oh! How small
These Words that I pen
Will be to me soon
Will seem to me when
There's no Shadow on Moon
And Genius slips in.

I Have a Place

I have a place
With dark secret pathways
hours pass by
For my own amusement
hollow back-stairways
Uninviting and weaving
With hardly a light
To throw shadows in corners
and stepways on steroids
Beneath my feet heaving
Threatening to speak of my comings and going.

I have a place
With wild secret nonsense
Where I speak in rhyme
And fumble my letters
And whisper and writhe and foretell of one coming
With hooves and umbrellas
And sex in a bottle
Incantations and whistles
My fingertips drumming.

I have a place
With dread secret passages
I'll juggle your dreams
If you dare to listen
To my travels and playtime
My wailing and rapping
My haunting and laughter
Mad mourningful singing
I creep along
Never boring of darkness
And conjure up company
For no special reason.

On the Death of their Six Year Old

They left their baby in the winter frost.
They will walk into his room tonight
Look at his bed, empty.
His small pillow.
Baseball blankets.
And they will
Fall

On

Their

Knees

Tumble blind into each other’s arms
In unthinkable, unspeakable, furious emptiness.

The furious emptiness
The furious defeat
The furious love that is sent out like rockets and land nowhere
Furious silence that implodes with the hungry noise of sorrow
Furious freezing of the heart.

It makes one weak and helpless to even think of them
To think the unthinkable
you must lay prone at the bottom of their hearts
and witness those hearts shatter and fall in flames down upon you,
Grotesque and dangerous
Furious
Volcanoes, out of control

Furious and full
Furious and empty
Furious with gentle love.
Grotesque and dangerous in each others arms.

They left their baby in the winter’s frost.

Not Silence

You will think I have no strength left
Barely breathing ~
Eyes clouded with the dust
kicked up from years lived.

I may want darkness, but not silence.

As I drift toward the River ~
The greedy boatman picking bones from rotting teeth ~
Waiting with grim impatience for my patronage ~
I shall fire up my will –
fan that pyre with the heat of my recent youth.
I will curse and ask for one last drink.

Let’s wrestle in the sounds and smells of my life gone by.

Not in silence.

Bring me music ~ haunting, shocking, pointless, poignant …
I think I shall like to drift away to something raucous and complex.

Fan the aroma of fresh baked bread and apple pies until the cinnamon and yeast , vibrant and powerful, waft throughout my dieing chamber.
Deny the stench of my decaying cells and chilling, slothful blood.

Not silence.
Laughter.
Laughter and children ~ squealing, teasing, crying.
Let them come with dirty faces and ill manners and
questions uncomfortable for mother’s to hear.

Not silence.
Your voice.
Loud. Audacious.

And dance if you can.

Be an accessory to my death.
Make it noisy. Bring the obscene.
And I shall do my part.

Serendipity

Some of my best friends are words. Serendipity is among my favorites. I enjoy the way it slides across my tongue, leaps from the roof of my mouth and bounces off my lips, its syllables so succinct, so pithy, even as one runs into another. And I like what it implies. It’s a windfall when one loves both the sound and meaning of an utterance. How challenging to love words for their sound alone! Take juxtaposition. I admire that word for its audacity. I would use it often if only it didn’t machine-gun into the air, a reign of bullets, indiscriminate assaults on ignorant ears.