All of them laughing

i only write about the dead. 

the dead are all i write about 

because i cannot get over those 

cold still hands. 

i cannot get over those 

lonely sounds.

i cannot, just cannot 

get over them. 

Hours, months pass 

and graves close up;

new things grow on top; 

a hard scab forms that only 

hurts if you move

the wrong way. 

best not stress that scab or else 

it bursts with hard new pain. 

i only write about the dead because 

i cannot get over them, 

i write to rip their fingers from my heart, 

to scrub their dander 

from my skin. 

the suffocating dead; i see their faces, 

all of them laughing. 

all of them content, 

all of them tired of me, 

my endless mourning.

Cry a gray river

All day every day their cries 

invade my house, 

cries so shrill they burst 

from souls of souls from all directions, I hear 

the screamers shot, gassed, 

blasted from homes, 

kicked over borders; 

every day I hear 

the whimperers--sick, hungry; those 

despised for some singularity, 

some disparity at birth and then 

there’s the mourners like me 

whose lovers left them. 

What can we do 

after the postcard to Congress, 

after the march, 

after the all-night benders? 

I can say crying a deep gray river will soothe us, 

somehow a gray river of tears

will hold us steady;

and so will chanting 

and so will rocking, 

and so will praying, 

though no one 

beyond the lamp post 

will give a damn but

we can rest. 

Warning

There were warnings.

The frisky pulse and flow within,

the puzzled looks, the growing thin.

the kinks in lids, the stickiness and all

in every honeycomb of him, up, down, I heard 

the call but was sure of time, thought more of it then

--not so now I’ve seen its fainting pen, 

for really time and time again that glue

was always plenty, really all we knew.

But it runs, runs out on them, on you

and we are locked long in its slur:

shame and blame all go with mourning 

and then the anxious wait 

for yet another warning.