the old promenade of the
graveyard loops its anarchic
teeth around me;

I think of Mister Death

his eyes unclouded by fear.

I think of cysts and powders
and drainages;

I think of pills in tight orange
cases, meticulously labeled

I think of needles and ******
and God;

I hear the trouncing and
bumping of lives

like the overlapping shadows
of branches beneath an
Elder tree.

I ask the eating
dusk if Mister Death
ever visits the littlest
of the graves


to wonder where it all went
wrong.