why do blackbirds
leave so many brown droppings
on my white mailbox, riveted
to a red painted post, planted
in green Bermuda grass, by
a gray asphalt road, under
a baby blue eye sky

Dylan is dead.
no, not Bob, you Philistine,
Dylan Thomas who implored us
to rage against the night;
so are a passel of poets
and penners, but not I

Emily heard her fly buzz,
well before her eyes shut; she
was a wee bit obsessed
with the reaper

Hemingway's also a goner;
guts enough to shove a shotgun
in his mouth--mostly I wonder if
he tasted blue gunmetal like I did,
and who cleaned his brains
off the wall?

nobody had to clean a red dollop
of mine, for the firing pin was askew
and all I got was a click, and a sense of shame,
and impotence more flaccid than
the one which put the barrel
in my mouth

hell, how hard is it
to **** yourself--I guess harder
than I thought, since I never bought
another rifle

so Dylan is dead
Em and Hem too, but you
are reading these lines without
contemplating your own demise
I suspect

after all, it's early spring
and a time of new things
clawing their way into the light
thinking nothing of the terminal
night -- but it's just a sun dip away:
ask Dylan or Hemingway, or even JFK
but I wouldn't bother the Belle
of Amherst

she would make parting
sweeter than sorrow, and she
never tasted the cold lead, or spoke
with fear or dread of the dumb
and the dead

she never murdered
men in black pajamas  
in a forest primeval...

I didn't see their spirits
ascending, in ribbons of light,
only rivers of their red blood
soaking the green ground,
yet today ravenous
for more it seems

why would she rage
against the good night, when
her carriage waited patiently for her,
and immortality, her vessel bound
for a light Dylan and I
will never see

always in the fog, the klaxon sounded,
announcing another round of shelling

Tuck was terrified, for he
thought this was a hound
from hell, and it was

telling London to head
to the underworld--dank cellars
or shelters built for survival,
or mass burial

depending on where Gerry's
bombs decided to land

the lasses knew well the drill:
grab their favorite doll and say a
prayer,
             going
                        down
                                   the
                                         stairs

Mum would grab Tuck--his shivering body
not soothed by her warm embrace

for when the hounds stopped their menacing moan
deeper doomed demons would begin their call;
the beast sensed this, and he had no god
to beg for salvation

he could only feel the rumbling of the ground
and not close his ears to the sound, which riveted
stakes through his bones

he stares
he covets
he loves
he hates

not only the elixir,
its anesthetizing allure,
but also its vessel

in which he can see
reflected, his hands,
his mouth

though not his eyes;
they reveal too much:

his last human touch
lambs on blood red fields of war
his mother gasping her last breath
his stillborn son

in this parley
his eyes cannot belie  
he hears screaming voices
in an empty, stone
quiet room    

the glass, then, will win;
‘tis an unfair balance; its perfect
symmetry, its solemn silence
the almighty alchemy it holds  

against him--his ghosts,
his hands, his mouth, all ready
to concede defeat

perhaps
we were not meant to take this trail alone
perhaps we were

a few inches too far right
on the ledge--half the width of my foot
and I suppose I fell

and here I am, fine,
though I can't move my left leg or right arm
blood is in both my eyes

gravity's curse carried me here
and is channeling this scarlet stream,
from wherever it began,
into my field of vision

which, though red clouded,
holds the base of a pine, boulders
as big as buffalo, and a black bird

a crow I suspect, soon
to be joined by his brethren--to enjoy
the feast of me

my pain wanes, as do thoughts
someone will find me in this steep ravine
a hundred meters below the trail
two long miles from the road

perhaps
we weren't meant to do this alone
but I did, and I am here,
alone

save for the crow
and I can't help but wonder
if my eyes will be open when the birds
begin their work

or if greedy buzzards
will join them, to take my
flesh from bone

the pain wanes
I am sleepy, the lone crow
now a ******

their eyes are open
mine feel heavy--perhaps
I have the answer

closed

I wrote about you last night
when there were supposed to be
a million falling stars

clouds got in the way
but hell, those weren't really suns
falling to their death

would have been fitting
if they were, for the cliche is apt:
you being my light of day

and you did fall from the sky,
though not through the firmament at night
with others tracing your trails

you jumped solo from the
GW Bridge, on a clear Thursday
at a low high noon

your obit was politically polite, not
describing your terse flight, or the bones
the Hudson's waters crushed

so I wrote about you last night
a missive to me--I asked what the Times did not,
what was your final thought

when you stepped from the rail:
did you see your whole life fly before your eyes
or just sky, water and the helpless bridge

cracked an elbow making a tackle,
ruptured a kidney throwing a body block;
my less than illustrious football
career curtailed

so I chose to run:
an active verb--organs, bones,
are nouns, things to be damaged,
broken, frozen in almighty time

which slowed my sprint to a
jog, then my jog to a hurried hike
on my arid prairies and around
my wooded lane

where the young neighbors eye
me zipping by, deep in thought--who
is that old man pondering parts of speech?
don't let the children listen to him

for I know they have their own bones
yet to break, their own journey to make,
from fanciful fields of fame, to cruel knowledge
nothing remains the same--nouns decay

I'll keep walking wild as long as I can;
I recall making the last tackle, that final
fated block--those nouns now long gone, and no
adjectives can bring them back