The first death that I can remember was when I was three years old. It was some great great aunt of mine who I did not know. All I remember was the hospital.

The next was a half uncle who I had just barely met. A long lost brother ripped from the world by lungs turned black.
I remember crying; I was seven.

When I was twelve my grandfather had a stroke and we went to the hospital eight hours away to say goodbye just in case.
There was no just in case about it.
Just a tired man in a hospital bed who's eyes I never saw open again.
I remember standing up front at the funeral so people could shake my hand and apologize for my loss.  
There was the faint taste of salt at the corner of my lip stretching up my face.

A friend of mine lost five kids from her school last year. I didn't know what to say to her.
Because how can you tell someone that life goes on when for some people it doesn't?
How do you console the living who are trying to console the dead?

For Fin's Mother (read the new poets)

I have not seen nor sipped
your adoration for Fin

no ma'am,
I have gotten drunk on it

the duality of motherhood,
essence caught and captured,
fathers too, but different
not lesser but concocted
in other ways

I go to battle for you,
I go to battle with you

it drives home the greatest truth
that took me years to fully appreciate

the best poems are not of nature
or love or sadness,
of fear and fates cursed,
tho all these here interspersed,
in this dominating, forgiving song,
pure ode to Fin, and every child

But something that is beyond complicated,
so multi colored, so beyond my elementary,
that I revert to something simple -
a summation of creation

God bless the child that's got his own

A mother and child union
that celebrates its reunion,
nay, it's unity,
in every kiss, touch and even,
even in every memory -
if that is all there is,
for the memories are just as real,
as if it but an instant passed

the bottle is

the
bottle
is

the bottle is empty

had its contents been precariously dealt with
or
drop by drop assimilated?

assimilated?by the cloths of
silk pashmina cashmere
or the blackness of a tuxedo

i might never
ever
know, my father forgets

to the left

to
the
left

to the left of the bottle
is another bottle
quite smaller.

it is filled with
pink liquid
half full--or half empty

barely used by its
current owner
it smells like apples

and by the bottles is

and
by
the
bottles
is

and by the bottles is a ring
with two keys
that open locks somewhere

of COURSE!

why, what else would you
use a key
for?

the darkest
alternative for a key's usage, though
is to

hurt
some
body
with
it

metal
grinding the
skin

and the bottles

and
the
bottles

and the bottles thrown
the former can shatter
the latter houses a liquid

but,

but,
but,
but,

why?

THEY all want to play Hamlet.
They have not exactly seen their fathers killed
Nor their mothers in a frame-up to ****,
Nor an Ophelia dying with a dust gagging the heart,
Not exactly the spinning circles of singing golden spiders,
Not exactly this have they got at nor the meaning of flowers-O flowers, flowers slung by a dancing girl-in the saddest play the inkfish, Shakespeare, ever wrote;
Yet they all want to play Hamlet because it is sad like all actors are sad and to stand by an open grave with a joker's skull in the hand and then to say over slow and say over slow wise, keen, beautiful words masking a heart that's breaking, breaking,
This is something that calls and calls to their blood.
They are acting when they talk about it and they know it is acting to be particular about it and yet: They all want to play Hamlet.

While our sun is setting during
The evening commute,
On the other side it's
Rising.
Alarm clocks and whistling
Coffee pots in morning light
Breakfast cigarettes on the
Front porch watching dawn break
And I'm watching dusk so
For a second in time we're
Inexplicably intertwined.