Death Triptych
I
Each day at work for nineteen years
Archbishop Henry Chichele
Was forced to face his greatest fears
To sit against his own gisant
To gaze at his mortality
Resplendent fleshy red and gold
Above his rotten wormy clay
In constant dread of the brisant
Effect of knowing what's to come
His nerves would fail as visually
Assaulted by his transi cold
And naked hard below his pall -
How is this any different from
The death row con who every day
Confronts the green room down the hall?
II
At a pub in Kinvara I met a man who claimed to have dangled backwards on tiptoe at the edge of the Cliffs of Moher while his mum took pix with her phone. I did not believe him until his mum showed me the pix. Then I dreamed that he returned and pushed me off the cliff.
III
Sitting waiting rotting
Texting seldom talking
Riding seldom walking
Wanting not denying
Moaning never crying
Shoving never loving
Slaving never saving
Eating never living
Plowing always dying
Das ist alles, Leute!
Talking With My Dead Self
Why are those merry brats making
How should I know?
Well you should know
You're here
Aren't you?
Isn't this earth your home?
I'm an expat wherever I am
Which is nowhere
An expat maybe
But not nowhere
You're there
You're a lump six feet under
Nowhere useful maybe
But at least I'm something
You up there are nothing
You're the one who's really nowhere
Why didn't you tell me this before it was
Too late?
For you it's always
Too late
If your world dies before you
What are you then?
Where are you then?
Nothing
Nowhere
If you die before your world
You persist
Why didn't you tell me this before it was
Too late?
For you it's always
Too late
You could have figured it out
On your own
All the evidence has always been
In front of you
So I, a something, am nothing
But you, a nothing, are something
I died while my world was still alive
So I
Wraithless matter
Live on
But your world died while you still live
So you
Matterless wraith
Nature Unnatural
There sits a bear who's babysitting baby moose
For mother moose, protecting them from jaguars, snakes,
And most of all from human predators who think
They own the planet free and clear and won't turn loose.
No one must disagree with babysitting bear.
He won't debate with anyone. Whoever makes
A sound is met with claws and teeth. What can we do
When we don't want to hear what we hear over there?
We hear what we don't want to hear, but can't hear what
We want to hear, while he hears every little clink
And jerk for miles around. He can't be fooled by you
Or me or anyone who's edible. Wait what?
Rereading poems that I wrote, some long ago, some recently
Some flashed done in minutes, some assembled over decades
Some good, some mediocre, even bad
Some forgotten, some familiar
Some I don't know why I wrote them
Some I don't remember what I meant
Some have lost whatever sense they ever made
Some I don't understand at all
But in their time they were all I had
To mark my stumbling path and guide my gliding way
Five Haiku Poems
At first there's nuthin
And then there's sumthin and then
There's nuthin again
Progressive despair
One inch forward, ten miles back
Despondent progress
Why pay to be kept
Under surveillance? That's what
Cell phone owners do
My son and I don't
Talk but we write poetry
About each other
No worse emotion
Than meaning well but being
