Monday, October 31, 2022

riopelle's "pavane": a monologue

 

we approach the age of

possible cures slowly

 

if we number the dead

we do it backwards

and starting at one thousand

 

two will be the person

you hold most dear and maybe

you'll never reach it

 

maybe you'll be forced to choose

 

a child or a spouse

or even a younger sister and

what happens is this

 

we make love

on the living room couch in

the coldest part of april

 

the sky is a gift from magritte

the houses on this street

somewhere between obsolete

and sinister

 

you ask me again how

my father died and i tell you again

that i don't know

 

he was alive and then

he was on the kitchen floor

 

he was hooked up to

competent machines and then

the machines were turned off

 

and it's here that

the baby wakes up

and the story is forgotten

until next time

 

it's here that the world of

barking dogs and ringing phones

reasserts itself

 

what goes left unsaid

is that no one has been saved


Tuesday, October 25, 2022

IT MIGHT BE TIME TO SET THE STORY RIGHT

 


the collapsing now

 

felt like a barbed-wire crown or a

sepulchre filled with rot and blood

 

like christ with her one good eye

shot out and the other fixed firmly on

the receding future

 

a joke, maybe, and all of us

the punchline

 

a painting in shades of entropy

 

boil the pigs in holy water until

the skin starts to peel off,

and is spoiled meat better than starving?

 

is your faith based on

magic and fairy tales?

 

i’m still waiting to

find one that isn’t







Sunday, October 16, 2022

poem for a generation of tired failures

 


motionless

like christ’s

fingers dug deep inside

                    his spine

 

no good

 

the heart exposed

all tragedy all irony all

blinding light

 

a metaphor for

despair

 

and you don’t love this

woman but you want her to

love you and none of us in

this room are beautiful

 

all of us in

this desert

are dying of thirst

 

a bunch of fucking

babies, but that’s how

we were raised


Friday, October 07, 2022

further down

 


not a poem because

poems are lies

but a film instead

 

a shaky image of a woman

none of us knows

screaming without sound

 

protesting

fist in the air and then

an anonymous soldier knocking her

to the ground

 

kicking her in the face until

her blood stains the pavement

 

raises his rifle butt to drive it

into what remains of her mouth

and then the screen goes white

 

the ending can

only be assumed

 

the assumption can only

become your future