Part I.

I walk past latter-day messiahs
who have the tact to crucify themselves
before the rest of the world,
the pride to beg for humanity,
the humility to shit and piss and rave,
and the gall to ask for your spare change.

There are broken flowerpots on the street-
scattered, spewing fertilizer
that will help retake the land
one blade at a time,
inch by inch, parking lot by sullen parking lot;
or maybe as a bomb-
send us nature in the mail
by overnight express.

Petals gather in frightened clumps
out by the ashes of the woodshed.
My rotten house stands nearby-
empty windows plead with a god that doesn’t care
and wouldn’t shed a tear (even if he listened),
so they weep in silence,
six miles out of town;
six miles from an island on an amber sea
drowning in its rolling waves
Don’t blink-
                 it’s gone.

I find my solace in the mountains
soft and silent with the season’s third snowfall;
a cooling blanket over hot shadows.
Smoke rises,
                  a narrow grey line against the sky
from the chimney of my warmly lit skull,
abandoned and forgotten,
but content enough to smile.

Then winter dies and the ghost of spring
holds spectral hands against my throat
beneath the flood of life.
The mountains vanish above the water,
replaced by saw-toothed rusting forests.
I’m partly glad to drown-

The waters bring my body home
where emergency personnel
(trained from birth to stop me from dying)
resuscitate me,
fix and heal and “save” me,
then gently guide me from their friendly horror show
with macabre white walls and bleached linoleum
inhabited by sterile minds behind masks and rubber gloves
so they don’t get my blood on their hands?

They escort me outside,
free to fall to the ground again.
They let go-
but they’ve “saved” me from myself.

I, an unfair victim of gravity,
hear a whispering behind me:
“Memento mori-”
                           Yorick grins.



Part II.

Don't
step on
the cracks. (We can't afford
                   to fix
                   them.)

Now the tar is in us
and our hearts are paved with-

Do you remember
  tricycles
    and bicycles
      and roller skates
        and things?

The hills used to be so fucking green-
where are they now?
In the tombs we broke into
that night on the moon
when our spirits ran away?
Are they somewhere beneath
our roadsigns and stoplights
and parking lot scabs?

The pictures of our lives
are faded silver photographs
in ornate rusted frames
gathering dust on a shelf
in that room of your grandmother's house
where it smells like yesterday
and you're afraid to go in
because you might break something
                                                      -again.
They stare out (eerily) from between molded leather books
that no one's ever read,
flanked by statuette bookends, pewter and cold.

[How to tie a noose:
step one. cut fifty inches from the world's biggest ball of twine
step two. count to thirteen, slowly
three. get out of your Red truck
four. put on your White suit
five. watch someone turn Blue]

Modern medicine suggests poison for this purpose-
it's the latest
and greatest
in mass media murder.
(Now black hood technicians
in white lab coats
won't feel green
while we become grey
                                  corpses.)

And we will be
excavated Pompeian shadows;
our ashes will be plotted
and our eyes ignored-
now we see through a glass
forever, darkly.

Can you read regret
on the cracked plaster cast faces
in the alcoves of your livid cathedrals,
still crouching in forgotten shade?

Should you explore a yellowed newspaper
under vaulted ceilings,
would you just believe the headlines?
Turning the page,
I would find the comics
and mourn the newsprint clowns.

Now the human cannon- loaded;
this circus- near completion;
the band is playing requiem
before we've left our seats.

In the news today:
Liberty has drowned herself,
seeking salvation
in New York City Harbor.

We've lain in the earth for twenty-three years;
there is no more golden spraypaint for the streets.

May violets spring from winter's heaving.