They will leave my sins
In moldy boxes On my front porch For months to come I will find them sitting there When I get home Drooping cardboard Corrugation exposed I will salvage what I can Put the rest on the curb Let someone take them away Crush them Bury them deep Where the seagulls and rats Can't reach Perhaps in years to come It will become a golf course The place where all my wrongdoing Has gone to rot The one hole on which Nobody can ever make par The grass yellowed and dry
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Thumbing the beads of her necklace
I can still hear her telling me she loves me Costume jewelry resting on my black clad thigh The only thing I have left of her I lean my head back Strain to remember her smell The feel of her arms around me As I bent down to hug her I didn't think That would be the last time I saw her That I would now be actively avoiding one half Of this small town church So as not to have to see her again I will never hear "Bridge Over Troubled Water" Without crying I will never play Scrabble Without thinking of her house rules The box scribbled with fifty years of high scores I will never see a gladiolus Without imagining her name in it I slide down the pew Grasp the hand of the woman I will soon No longer be able to call cousin As we sob together Our loss mutual in this moment But mine so much greater Because I know what's to come This is the last time I will see these people Before they hate me Before they will turn to each other Proclaim me manipulative and arrogant I will tell one person That I am sorry For any part I ever played in their pain That I can't prolong my own anymore And now that she's gone It's time I took my leave as well The first words she ever spoke to me "when are you getting married?" I sometimes wish I'd said "never" There is beauty in dead things
In blackened viscera and creeping fetid rot A knot of entrails piled neatly like sculpture Or funnel cake Its body yards away mostly intact The burglar's mask of a raccoon still fluffy and flyblown A baby turtle as perfect as it hatched Red dots painted on its nose I want to pick it up Breathe into it But it's alone here on the side of the road No mother to come shepherd it to safety Something else was a shepherd Left it to waste We take our own dead make them up to look like life but the mark is missed As if applying color will put the soul back in its seat We can't bear witness to sallow cheeks and sunken eyes Because to look at our dead is to see ourselves And death will never come to us Because we exercise regularly We go to our doctors We eat raw celery And drink only pure artesian spring water We bring death to other things For food For sport For clothing We wear death proudly Denying its access to us personally But death will come Regardless of your fear and staving off And you will be beautiful Like a broken necked bird A leather watch band stretches as it is worn
Forcing the wearer to cinch it tighter This I can understand I also stretch as I am worn Needing to be cinched tighter around myself To keep from falling away Getting lost in the crush of bodies on the busy sidewalk My face carelessly shattered by a passing stiletto And left to tick away my last seconds alone Standing in the humid night air
Beneath the old growth walnut tree We are talking About nothing And the security light switches itself off Our motion too distant now for it to trigger and flood the scene with too much brightness I cannot account for these feelings The cold sweat and tunnel vision Of my blood pressure dropping Waiting for the trap door to go out from under me I know what's coming I should care so much less But as you take my cold hand in your warm one And silence my chatter with your lips My vulnerabilities are on display With nowhere left for me to conceal them If I allow this Will you crack them open To exploit their tenderness Or mend their fissures to strengthen me? |