home again

lovers,

            I’ve always wanted

                        the balls

to start a poem like that

no,

     it’s after dinner &

I’m practically forty

     the one night stand last

weekend

     was obliging enough

tho, I am sure, bored

at my beige corduroy chair amid tennessee

williams background & notes recounting

how much money my old roommate owes

the crime is neither of us takes the time

to pay respect to the dead

            even on high holy days

too french, you say

to speak of deaths of fire and of stone

            or the ghastly waters

            that hitchhike up our veins

in time for the charcuterie to arrive

            (at forty, I can afford the good cheese)

as we indulge in a planned amnesia

long enough to pass communal stories

in our Sunday best

the best of our outside voices

come to announce our forgetting

of the indiscreet

diaspora of those I care for

we all end up

under the employ

one way or another

and learn to hustle even

in our waking hours

and very edge of our hard

earned beds

this can be a prayer, if you like

the kind of plea for justice,

for past pleasures,

karma to swallow the heart

of the old gossip who stands indignant

on the corner certain

someone has stolen her tomatoes,

for one of the good days,

for Chris, whose father died,

for too many grieving friends to

name like column inches

of newsprint giving honor &

at least memory to our

ghosts

it is summer again,

I thought we’d just lived through the last one

with the rains in my boots ever present

while my friends choke

back the ash of western

reality

I once was a singer

and after four days rested

seems as though I am stuck

in accidental harmony

a flaw between my ear & throat

not all rhymes have reason

never to hit the true note

I’ve made a career out of the misheard

           

6/26/14

Bryn Mawr