Some Poems for the Night Owls & Early Birds
Sat Apr 05, 2008 at 09:48:55 PM PDT
Hello, friends. Every Saturday I post some more of my odd little verses for your perusal. I hope you find something interesting in them. I'd also love to see some of your stuff.
It's about 6:45 here in glorious Hawaii. It's a quarter to ten in Seattle, it's 10:45 in Big Sky Montana, it's 11:45 is my chilly former home, and it's 12:45 on the east coast.
Good night, all you wonderful Kossacks.
He looks so doggone nice
doesn't he?
Why, he just
radiates waves of
sweet, down-home,
country-style,
biscuits 'n' gravy love.
Only his diary knows
that his fondest wish
is to see the entire world
holding hands
in the sweet
brotherhood
of universal
rigor mortis.
He could finally
relax then.
It would finally stop
following him.
And he wouldn't have
to sing himself
to sleep
any more.
Everything returned one day.
No one had ever seen the like of it.
Skate keys from 1938 showed up,
all shiny and ready for fun.
That jacket the blonde headed guy
left in the theater was there, and it had been
dry cleaned and everything.
Armies of proud washing machines
rolled down the street
cheered by excited throngs,
ready for happy and productive
chores.
All the murder weapons came
back, too, serial numbers fully
legible again.
And people who hadn't been seen
for a while
made unexpected visits
at unexpected hours.
They are unseen
but omnipresent.
They are silent,
yet their words are
heard constantly.
They are ignored
but they run
the world.
They have disappeared
but their hands
still hold the reigns.
No one knows their names
but the future is theirs.
They are dead
yet they will outlive
us all.
For some of them
it will never be over,
at least not until the
final bridge has been crossed.
They will always live
in that steel day,
always see the beloved friend
turned into a spray
of raw hamburger,
always know the
ghastly exhilaration
of running through mad storms of
whistling death,
always hold the buddy from
boot camp as he breathes his last.
No day that followed
has ever meant as much to these
men, and never having been there,
I cannot know what that
particular screwdriver driven into
the brain feels like.
But I will always respect the
boundaries of the darkened room
where those memories reside,
and I will never casually urge
other men to find out
where the door to their own room
is.
She whirls in the darkness
in a dance of heart-stopping
grace,
her every lithesome move
the definition
of movement itself.
Her leaps and pirouettes
would stun the Kirov's
stars, but none will
ever sit in jealous awe
as she performs.
Her theatre is closed to all
and she would sooner
burn it down
than let a coarse and barbarous world
be blessed by her tender power.
You can set it down now.
You've carried it one hell of
a long time,
and I wouldn't be surprised
if it's made a permanent dent in your
shoulder by now.
I will admit, however,
that that old piece of wood
you've lugged around
for so many years
has really become part of your
identity, although maybe not
in the way you imagine when
you're alone and adding up
the outrages
that have been committed
against you that day.
You've been showing it off
for so long that even the people
who used to wonder
when you were finally going to reach
Golgotha have stopped asking
about it.
So you might as well dump it
in some place where it'll
be handy for the garbage men to pick up.
We got the message a long time ago.
Now you're just becoming a bore.
The days melt away
and so do I.
There will be no trace of me
some day
except for the records
kept in electrons
and those will die out
too,
forgotten in some
indecipherable corner.
Immortality
is a mug's game.
But ever since Gilgamesh
the suckers have been
laying down
the coin.
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