Send me dead flowers...*

He wanted his tombstone
to exhibit just the facts, Ma'am.

No cherubs or platitudes,
meaningless dates or military service.

Only the really important stuff.

Which toenail had the fungus.
His endless dreams of falling.
His penultimate decision about
the imminent existence of God.
How he became a hermit.
Why bourbon was the best medicine.
How, after 57 years, he found a voice.
His two or three best puns.
The virtues of solitude and celibacy.
The best *** he ever had.
Who really killed the Kennedy's.
How he came to fear cassowaries.

Just the things that really mattered.
The things that actually made a life.

This might require a billboard
intsead of a tombstone.

Little enough to ask for eternity.

a man of no fortune with a name to come.*

Important things are happening
in the outside world of events,
but no one ever mentions you.
You have had a celebrity buzz cut.
You are not attuned to twittering.
The glasses you broke work better now.
Your hunger for renown is so great
that you can't stand to order poverty.
The cat looks at you like protein.
Your bed is an ancient dry well.
The ghosts of your memories
can't even afford clean sheets.
Do not these signal events import?
If you could but get your boyish face
out there on the Internet, someone
in that outside world might mention you,
and the virtual lottery of fame would
allow you to purchase and stockpile
marrow bones, crème brûlée and ******.
You could go out with a belch of flame,
and everyone would say they knew you
long before you were even nothing.

t's so hard to walk in this old town anymore
since the cemetery took over every inch.
Wherever you go ghosts nibble your toes.
Dead people pretend to smile, but are resentful
Their mouths mumble but they say nothing.
The grave stones are shaped like former houses.
The lanes between them like streets you strolled.
Now the invisible exerts a ruthless domain.
There is not a nickel coke to be found.
Only empty glasses and bloodless lips.
Rather than become a flâneur of the lost,
I'd rather just stay inside and remember.
It's so hard to walk in this old town anymore.

Don't look back.* - Satchel Paige

Once upon a time, I
stumbled and dropped my life.
It hit the world hard
and shattered into a
myriad of sharp shards.
For years I struggled
to rearrange it
using the glue of
many helpful hearts.
But after I managed,
whenever I looked into it,
the life I saw was
never quite the same
as the one I dropped.

I dreamed I opened a bookshop
where you had to pass a reading test
before you could buy anything.
I just might have promulgated
a radiant, renaissance of literacy,
but I went broke long before that.

You must have a mind of winter...*

A gelid wasteland.
Your mittens disappear.
It feels cold without hands
and a ***** when your nose runs.
Winter chips your heart away
like flakes from a butter sculpture.
You are writing the secret history of Ice.
You never can discover the end.
Time has frozen into fragments.
Each fragment blasts a finale.
Let your reader choose the period
Crawl back into bed.
Clutch the covers to your chest.
Dream of laughing flamingos.

tis pity she's no more*

A redolence of musk pervades the evening's air.
Take situation in hand. Sweat and perfume. Lubricious.
Teasing digits. Pressures applied. Tense of touch.
An opening of skirts. A parting of lips. A portal.
Brush of thumb she begins to writhe. Early moaning.
Damp, wet, moist, oozing, dripping, slippy. Fruition.
Coming to. A dance of desire. So many ups and downs.
Withdraw slowly. Enter with alacrity. More is not less.
Hollows of legs on shoulders. Depth charges. Grasp of gasps.
Muscles massage. Internal grip. External eruption.
Bear down. Press your case. Silent screams. Everything ends.
Simply collapse into delight. Smooth texture. Fine night.