At Marie’s Memorial
I stand as still as a corpse and stare at photos,
Playbills, cast lists of forgotten plays
On abandoned stages. If the
wages of death is love,
Then love fills this room. But in the corner,
Lurking like a naughty child, is more sadness
Than I want to feel. All the years of the past,
Dripping memories like rank fruit,
rot
And fertilize the heart of this place.
So much has changed.
So much has been forgotten.
A lesson earned is not a lesson learned:
Those times were good -- and never can return.
An Old Man
An old man
Is a young man
Whose skin doesn't fit
An old man
Is a young man
Who mumbles to himself
An old man
Is a young man
Who prefers yesterday
An old man
Is a young man
Who takes another leak
An old man
Is a young man
Who can’t remember
An old man
Is a young man
Whose old man
Was right
The Ghost in the Gravy
The old
man sitting alone at the counter
laughs so hard that he starts coughing
and drools into his biscuits and gravy.
Wiping
his mouth with a sleeve,
he bundles himself into proper propriety.
Then he
mutters something so softly
only his best friend, dead two years,
can hear it
across the memory of
3258
shared breakfasts.
Autobiography
I have a leak in my soul
And through it my character flows
Drip by drip. The Yellow Pages
Do not list Plumbers
For the Soul. The sages
At church have much to say
On this matter but nothing
They know makes sense to me.
I have a crack in my heart
Through which my spirit wants
To go. The wages of sleep
Do not pay the rent. Dreams
Without spirit do not spend.
A spirit lost is a spirit gone.
I have a leak in my soul
And through it my character flows.
I have a rent in my mind
And everything unwinds.
I don’t know where I’ve been.
I don’t know where I go.
I have a leak in my soul
And through it my character flows
Into the vast unknown
Far, so far, from home.