Tuesday, August 15, 2017

sonnet for the touch of ghosts: one interpretation

 

or joni mitchell or
courtney love

not the songs
just the sorrow

dead lawns and dirty snow and
                                   all thoughts
reduced to the same shade of grey

nothing as simple as
southern california

nothing as broken as
these last 35 years

the prayers of small frightened animals
never translate
but the meanings can be guessed

the missing can be remembered,
but only imperfectly

watercolors of fog or of steam,
of black ice at midnight

the push and pull of lovers
who haven’t spoken for fifteen years

not death, but a
different kind of living

a neverending series of
slowly closing doors

is this what you meant when you
said goodbye was a meaningless word?

one hundred thousand miles spent
driving lost beneath this dying sun and
are we any closer to home?
  
nothing to do in these last frozen
days of the year but
laugh at the spreading flames

nail the twitching corpse of christ
to his crippled religion

laugh at all the pain caused by
such simple-minded good intentions



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