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Sarah Apr 2013
W hen reading
H istory about the west, you’ll find *****
I sn’t what
S oaks the bones of Western cowboys
K eeping the livers of the dead preserved,
E pitomizing their
Y outhful years as eager frontiersmen
Sarah Apr 2013
I see it for just a moment
A squishy mound of fur to the far right of the asphalt

This latest pile of dislocated mush is presented on a desert highway
A raccoon? No. Too small.
A coyote? Maybe. Who can tell?

That play-dough pile of crushed bones was not created outside the white lines where it now lays
Some chosen soul scraped and scooped the mystery meat to its resting place
Some jumpsuit wearing civilian is intimately aware with the parentage of the reassembled road victim
Do they have a moment of silence after the last shovel scrape?
Do they hold an internal roadside memorial?

What of the homicidal perpetrator behind his wheels?
He must know the identity of his victim
He must feel the agony of guilt
Or, is his only remorse in the quarters he must spend at the self-service carwash to remove the evidence?

Perhaps Road-**** animals haunt their vehicle killers
Maybe their blood can never be truly washed from the ****** weapon’s shinny surface
Like spots on Lady Macbeth’s hands
Perhaps the killer’s dreams are frequented by unidentifiable ****** mounds with eyes that stare from unnatural places

After all
Justice must be had in one way or another
For the unrecognizable John Doe pile represents all those wild things that must chance to cross the hard, hot, lethal highway
Sarah Apr 2013
To look up and to look out is to see you
I see tragic hope and I am mercilessly humbled

I know you know me. You see me too.

I am below and within you. I am the possibility of hope
I am the mercy to your world
I am its consolation prize

The emptiness of the sky is to my grateful advantage
It makes possible the idea that you fill it
It makes possible the hope to see you

It is my canvas
I fill it with your smell and your touch and the relief of your presence

I have climbed as close to the canvas as I can here to see you clearly
And I do
I am not without you
In sickening ironic contrast
You make the world seem more alive

And I am comforted to know that you rest
In high places
Sarah Apr 2013
Poems that rhyme and
are strategically timed
frustrate the hell out of me

I long for the wit
that would make me emit
on the page, writing clever and free

With words that make sense
when I try to commence
to describe the sky or sea

I hope to be blessed
with the poetical zest
to make my rhyming agree

Or the lyrical grace
to help me encase
the symptoms of human ennui

But I know in my heart
though I be smart,
that rhyming just isn’t for me

For* this* poem couldn’t be made
without the helpful aid
of a rhyming dictionary

— The End —