Found on the beach this morning
by New Floridian tribesman
were sea-softened pieces
of the torch
the stone lady held
ages ago
before we found out
that freedom was just as imaginary
as any other silly idea we've ever had.

They propped them up
against what was left of the old Mouse-Man monument
their edges touching in a way
so that they may together provide shade
to any passing child of the wasteland.

The last story ever to be told
was whispered to an infant
born in an unlucky time
just moments before the end
of everything we once thought to be Everything.

Almost a biblical scene:
The ash-snow covered the ground outside,
and a baby lay in a makeshift manger.

The child, understanding nothing of the plot,
was only comforted by the raspy voice
and rough, cracked hands
of a kind old stranger.

A lance of morning light
beamed on them from a small hole
in the rusted ceiling.

He spoke just loud enough
to drown out the distant cries
of those who burned alive
for the sins of greedy men.

Summer death lingers
in the air, corpse leaves fall - still
soon to be buried

How lonely it is
walking toward the sunset
my cell phone is dead

On cement pillows
resting for revolution
nearby, the grass grows

I killed Jehovah.
Now slay your Jabberwocky
only then - true peace.

There is always a breeze here
and there’s a white gazebo
in the shade of the house
it is all as perfect
as it would appear
to Norman Rockwell
In the back, there’s a flowerbed
the names of the flowers, I don’t recall
and perhaps
never knew;
but the names on the headstones that sleep there
I’ve always known
and I will remember them
until my name is worked into a rock as well
Over here used to be
nothing,
but now there is
a taller than tall apple tree
as old as I am
and twice as wise
I come here sometimes when
life gets too congested and I
need to breathe
or sometimes just when
I have nothing else to do
but think and write about things
I don’t know

I sit back in the gazebo
pretending to admire the comforting cornfield’s endlessness
like the simple man I sometimes wish I was
I imagine I believe in God
or at least, Heaven
and pretend to feel them looking down at me
I smile at myself
on their behalf
I think about all the years
my grandpa spent building that house
and the stories he told me, my father,
about the kind of mother she was
and I think it would make them happy
to know that someone hasn’t forgotten
about the place that,
for some reason, I can’t quite figure out,
always has this breeze