In the End
How essential it is
to go back to dust,
ashes & be forgotten
by springtime.
When longing for rhyme
& gathering wild cotton
& understanding that lust
& love are no longer what is,
for such is tucked away.
Staying is not an option.
No longer to inhabit the earth,
but kept from wishing, from desire.
In the end things expire,
no more touching, no more worth
in a woman pressed to man. Only absorption
night & day…
I have the harness from the carriage house
across the alley, back from when a horse
was transportation. No one needs weathered hide,
so I watch it hold its place, draped on the roof
of the dog house, a comment on a passing age.
The cracked concrete where I sit and watch
the sun advance through trees was once
a stable and a workshop where a man could think
about the world from his perspective, free
from other plans about his time. He could feed
his family with the letterpress he kept, a library
of fonts that caught what anyone could pay for.
The need for words remains. Orderlies chat
with janitors on a smoke break from routine.
One hammer pocks a building into permanence
without the syncopation of another man’s arms.
Jets burrow through thin air. We fill the silence
and birds filigree the margins, take our yards
into the arch of seasons. Birds and insects, people work.
I sit while everything needs done and watch for ghosts.
someone is chewing gum
behind the green door
extremely close and very loud
everyone switches bodies (even if
they hate each other/especially
if they hate each other)
no one knows if there will be life
after the end of bacon
they receive over
three thousand hours of sun a year.
It never rains for too long, but weather
is an advertiser’s smile
not a rule.
While I moved on the bow of a tour boat, precipitation
threatened, then landed, coating my hair
and skin. Storm-awakened water
churned under, around
me, alive.
I fell and rose in the upheaval.
My lips taste of salt.
Look at this fookin’ guy over here
Doofus dropped a doughnut on his desk
Now he’s ersatz Tony Montana
Fine China white powder all over
And a sheepish smile for all
Who pass by his “manse.”
(From J St. O, a postscript: The storm knocked out his inner-nyet connection last night, so he had to wait until this morn. He sheepishly submitted the above with humility and thankfullness. Prosit, all.)
When she was young the vet told her mom
That the back of a male cat
Looks like a period
The female an exclamation point.
So apparently cats come
With punctuation she thought.
Later she learned that both sexes
Use a great many commas.
