The ligaments dry up;
They pull back.
The jaw drops.
We scream.
We all scream.
What is this hell ,
that Shakespeare never spoke
that Milton never told ;
that we all,
no matter how we look
or how we play
that we all, as we decay ,
look like we are screaming
once we are dead.
Lyres 22408
The Quesadilla as an Art Form
You have to understand the mechanics,
play by the rules
built the Taj Mahal from scratch,
mixing mortar with your bare hands.
You can’t take anyone else’s mud
or people scream and pity you behind their hands
and close doors in your face.
All the little scraps and shards
fit together like those old Colorforms
a little manipulation can make a triangle a tree
a square can be a barricade or an exit.
The pieces come in all sizes.
Placement is everything.
The smell of grandmothers is an awful thing,
lingering past their leaving.
I only ever heard her sing in church, singing hymns
and I only ever hear those hymns sounding
in that self conscious tone she always took
though her voice was pure
like brass bells.
Talcum powder and Camay soap-
which they dont make anymore- but I’ll share a secret
I saved the bar that was in the bathroom where
she left it, never coming home.
I saved it and sometimes when the night is too dark
I pull down the old suitcase and dig silently
past the treasures
and open the bag slowly, dragging a nail lightly
across the bar, pulling the scent of it around me
like an arm, whistling past the dark
and hearing all those hymns
as I lay me down to sleep….
Waist high walls of crumbling stone-
the long legged man merely steps across,
carrying the girl tight to his chest.
For a minute he can pretend
that she belongs to someone other than her self- him-
to be very specific.
They have a secret place they like to go.
They never mention it aloud, but when he sneaks away
and steals her from the night, they never go anywhere else
here is heaven,here is hell
and here is a small stone wall,
waist high, and winding.
Your breath smells of smoke and bourbon
so dont try to bullshit me, the nose always-always nose
It doesn’t matter whether you lie or not, dear ,
I hope the bitch was beautiful and the sex rocked your world
a condom would probably have been a great idea,
but I know how it is when you’re drunk and clumsy- how many
DID you break when it was us, long ago
when the bourbon and smoke wreathed us both
and the sex was all we could think about?
It doesn’t matter. I’m not leaving you over some cheap bimbo
with triple D tits and a bubble ass.
I am leaving because the silences are too large to overcome.
they are a wall I can’t leap, a fence too high
for this ol’ cowgirl to jump.
Life is no rodeo, and I’m too tired to be a clown.