How does one love during a time like this?
Watching the world through a screen
Perhaps the trick would be a kiss
To wake me from this dream
Watching the world through a screen
I fear my mind is mush
Dumb and numb and longing, interviene!
Someone wake me from this dream
I fear my mind is mush
Inside closed doors all day
Please, wake me from this dream
That feasts on repetition & decay
There’s a poison out there in the world,
stronger than any venom or toxin,
It can be injected through anything at anytime and anywhere,
It’s a paralytic poison,
Stopping you from doing all but the most essential functions,
It hits fast and hard lasting seconds to years,
This poison has a name,
It’s just two words but can destroy lives in a second,
The past
And God, if you didn’t know any better you’d think he was a Kennedy,
with how he dressed, by which he spoke, in the way that he walked:
handsome, and destined for incontestable greatness—
and when you looked at him you couldn’t help but wonder if, he too,
much like the others,
were cursed for all eternity.
Pine Mountain Cemetery IX
Johnny
Walk over the brow and down a bit to find
A wend of grapevines, old, strong standing
Over the narrow valley like an overlook.
Johnny, now resting just behind us broke
His arm and still swung all day, for one
Never knew when the vine would tire and sag
Stealing all the fun of that one ride. Fire
Beds between rock rings still smell of
Marshmallow, mustard and Hershey bar.
Sky so bright stars became our blanket
Against the swoop of cold air running
Down the face of our Pine Mountain.
Was it one summer or two before we raced
Into the dreamed for future we thought so dear?
Johnny died a spy caught in a foreign land.
The rest of us scattered to places not so
Scary, but never near the rock rings that wished
For our return for a swing on waiting vines.
