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
posted by T Martin | 9:21 PM
|
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