a yellow flower
or two,

ones I can't name,

survived June's arid,
brutal assault

ant mounds abound; scorpions
aren't despondent

Timothy grasses, weeds
don't complain

always there are
mesquites

stubborn adolescents
unaware steer dung left
their ancestors here

this is not a place one
can walk barefoot

not even the Comanche
had such soles

I tried, but you
lashed out

leaving goatheads
and other burrs
in my heels

perhaps to
remind me

I bought you,

but I own
nothing

you found me
in a second hand store
on Lincoln Avenue

you bought me
for nine dollars and tax because
you thought I was a mandolin

you told Tryone, the clerk
who would sell me into slavery, your
wife always wanted one

you took me home to your
twelfth story apartment; I discovered
your wife was gone many years

but her photo on the living
room wall got to see me, and hear
your lament:

you wished you would have
found me seasons sooner--but my
strings were rusted even then

my last song played at a bar mitzvah
before your hair turned white, before
your wife's many colored regrets

you played me but once and didn't
like what I had to say--you tossed me
from your balcony to the street

I made the same flight your wife did,
landed in the same spot; yes, I suspect she was  
more a disappointed music lover than you

when the shining glass looks back at us
like a stalled rerun of our personal opera
of soap, and the technicolor turns to charcoal gray
we know we are coming to the end of our day

and we look to other faces,
and their “windows to the soul,”
for a reflection of who we are, or
were; they cast an obligatory glance
or do an avoidance dance, when
we give an imploring stare
to see if they know,
we are still there

each day fewer shine bright
or glitter with glee and we wonder
what happened to me, the me they saw
and sought after in the colored world
of before

others disappear into their own dark night
having long endured their inevitable plight
of the cold mirror’s still, shattering view
and disappearing eyes of all but a few
who see us yet faintly in the light
that remains

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