Ghost
Over a year that passed and she--
Is a tall tale
I tell myself at night
And she is now mystery
Out of habit, I guess
I made love to her
That I never did,
Pausing at the threshold
Mindful of the rules
She becomes an apricot
My teeth firmly in
The juice flooding my mouth
Her flesh so soft to eat
This fruit becomes her
In all the glory I dreamed of
Her spine breaking under mine
The trembling as I come in
To Kill
To Prey
To Savor
She my fruit, my tomato
To smash against the wall
Then fold up and back again
She's mine, she's all mine
Give in, I whisper, and she does
But I realize
As the image fades
That she is there,
Just for the night
And she's gone, a simple ghost
Funny this joke, Ha-Ha
That person up there
Who sent her down to me,
So bitter I realize this
Her phantom recedes
In that bog to come out
Tomorrow...
X
Buddha watches from the shelf
Poets coming and leaving
Listening to the verse
Or perhaps the sound of just one
In a house that has seen others
His origins lost as the word drifts up
And is absorbed in his wood
Roadkill
Roadkill
That lay on the street
Prone, Flattened to a T
-This
Could be a sign
Of how it is today-
You can almost see the bones
Faintly outlined in the skin
Reality
Two men sat
On a bench in front of a bar
One was old as the walls
Pocketed with sealed holes
His age showing in wrinkles
Hair so white
As the sea of plaster behind him
Isolates little islands of paint.
He gazed passionately at his compadre
Who seemed a hawk in brown
Ready to strike with his holstered knife
And charged gun.
The old man was telling him how he,
In his youth, overthrew the Presidente
In the Revolution,
Who stained the land with his greed
With promises of freedom
In the moments of the lazy afternoon
The bustle of the bar rose to
A tune from the radio, broke by static
The old man's stories
Spun a song of how glorious the Republic was
And how the harvests of the peasantry were good
In those years gone by---
The hawk man didn't listen, but watched
The street of the village, with no one
Walking in the middle,
Colorful dress, baskets on their heads
Seemingly similar to the man in uniform
But no one came to talk to him, except the
Old man, his makeshift crutch leaning on the
Battered table outside
The old man broke off his tale to take a sip
Of the beer that lay in the cup
That sat near his crutch
It was gone with a gulp, a shade
Of sadness passed his wrinkled face,
As if to think of the olden days, and this
Present fear that everyone had
Leaving the bar and giving the soldier
Berth for oil tankers to dock.
The berth seemed apt to the hawk
In dust colored clothes
When a couple of strangers
Walked in the center of the road, and
They scared the people on the side
To have a look at the young man,
Then run into the houses and shut the doors
The strangers seemed curious about this,
With the old man shaking his head, said
A silent prayer under his breath
The hawk raised his gun, cocking the trigger
The cold black barrel shining in the light
Broke the silence with a crack, followed by
More cracks from the rooftops of other buildings
The strangers, three by number, tried to live
Their hands up wide
Abrupt death, they fell
The steel hawk, enforced by his fire stick
Left the small patio, his knife out in a casual manner
Walked out to the street, followed by others
All carrying sticks of their own
Poking and prodding the dead corpses on the road
Rifling through the dead men's possessions
For something precious they could own.
The old man, shook his head, watching this scene
Started to rock back an forth, a child in the chair
His whispers in the wind-
That was broken by the sounds of vultures
Fighting for carrion.
