scorpion corpse
sitting atop a wall
why die there?
vultures circle
i give them wide berth
they’ve yet to choose
ant-swarmed mantis
i thought you a leaf
do the ants know?
fresh flowers
mossy flush-set headstone
unseen, not lost
the potter’s field
out near the back fence
closer to the world
“I remember being born.”
“No. You don’t.”
“How would you know?”
“Well, let’s start from the assumption that you’re human…”
“I’d like to think so, but what are my options?”
“I don’t know. Humans don’t have that neural machinery at birth… So nothing from Earth remembers its birth.”
“And yet, I do.”
“Mightn’t you have cobbled together the scene from your mom’s stories, the family photo album, et cetera?”
“Nah! It’s too detailed. Feels too real.”
“I find your ignorance exhausting.”
“I find your certainty perplexing — not to mention irritating and slap-worthy.”
“Let’s agree to be mutually disenchanted.”
“Agreed.”
Oh, take me on a learning spree.
Explain the nature of reality.
Am I living in a simulation?
Perhaps, dumb luck is the world’s foundation.
Does life have meaning, or must I make one?
Should I live for love, or live for fun?
Should I consecrate or desecrate?
Do I live by chance or live by fate?
The answers, they grow no nearer.
Am I the heard or the hearer?
&
If I received such a knowledge bearer,
would I awake in bliss or in terror?
no diesel beast growls
quite like a deuce and half
laboring, lumbering, up a hill
it pops out a machine gun cadence
if a machine gun had to gasp now and again
gasp timed to gear grinding
then there is the chatter of the flap
that tinks upon the exhaust stack
beating out an unlovable rhythm
it smells like tarp, oily and musty
it feels like wood bench slats
that flex only with the most jarring bounce
but not enough to spare a kidney
helmets slop around on skulls
it’s a long drop when that creaky tailgate opens
who knows where?
5.) In Flanders Fields by John McCrae
excerpt [2nd stanza]:
We are the dead; short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
4.) Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas
excerpt [1st stanza]:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
3.) Because I could not stop for Death (479) by Emily Dickinson
excerpt [1st stanza]:
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
2.) To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick
excerpt [2nd stanza]:
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
The nearer he’s to setting.
1.) Do Not Stand At My Grave and Weep by Mary Elizabeth Frye [authorship disputed]
excerpt [opening lines]:
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow…
one never, ever, crests a rise
without killing off a pack of lies
the ugly lie: it’s all descent
belied by cold, granite torment
the pretty lie: continued gloom
skewered by rhododendrons in full bloom
He fancied himself a Bryan Mills
as played by Liam Neeson in “Taken”
…
only the Bizarro World version.
For he had no particular set of skills
[least-wise not as applicable to his situation]
&
instead of having had a child taken
he’d had one foisted upon him.
While this didn’t fill his every waking moment with violence
in a fight to recover the child
it did fill them all with chaos and occasional contusions
in the struggle to flee the bedlam.
And so, in that sense, they were practically twins.
rainy season spatters onto big leaves —
like banana leaves
playing the jungle like a white noise orchestra
close your eyes and the wall of sound
drags over your senses
smearing tactile and olfactory experience
into the bombardment
yet the sameness of sounds offers no hold
and so that rain-on-leaf spatter dance
lulls one into a ragged, tattered trance
whether it brings euphoria or dark fears
or jagged agony or inexplicable tears
one can’t know without surrender
energy spills down my back
a liquid, electric energy
the subtle tug can be felt against tiny hairs
if your mind can move at the pace of that subtle tug
and not be sprung like a panther’s lunge
you can find your surrender
day moon
subdued but looming
soon gone
sliver moon
crescent vanishing
hanging lure
mountain moon
lighting valleys
show my trail
shadowless
til milky moonlight
spills the clouds
nitid moon
you must’ve been resplendent
but I slept
belly-deep in glacial runoff
amid an emerald sea
a mud-caked troupe of elephants
the marsh free of acacia trees
Kilimanjaro looms in the distance
the source of all subsistence
if it should go
they’ll never know
it’s a death they can’t outdistance
