I think I hear the rabbit death
munching on a carrot stick.
You're in tune with destiny and I am out.
I'm afraid to sit on your bed.
To rattle the coming corpse.
The weight of my love
might send the mattress to the floor,
might smudge the paint
not set in its entirety.
You'll tell me you are crusty palettes
rocking on a shaky hand.
Besiege me to go my merry-less way.
Strip-search suns for rays of light.
You'll tell me you are down to rinds,
that juice and pulp are all but spent.
You'll point me at epiphanies
that clot a bruise and turn it black.
Lecture me on tractile grief
that stretches 'til you let it go.
How short the bliss, how frayed the string.
You'll insist I lift my thinning iron chin,
drop its anchor in a place that holds
more luck than old, old age.
"Don't waste the tune on mourning bells."
I see that clause in closing eyes.
Your teeth are swimming in a bowl,
as if you've lost your will to bite --
made some secret pact with peace
my stubbornness can't understand.
Convinced my parlor games with hope
are sault en route to chomping sea,
divots in a desert wind,
pierced umbrellas in a blizzard,
I must trick the pole and push --
wrestle with the flat balloon.
"My bones have had enough," you'll say.
And I will argue with besoin.
It's mine, of course.
You're ready as a morning egg.
So this is the box of death.
If not today, then soon
like a muscle relaxes a cramp.
A blank face, her frown mortared
to the crumbling bricks
of a body once sassy and poised,
coyly fingering the olive afloat in the gin.
She rolls a chair in jagged circles.
Hollow cyclone gaining ground.
Grabs a rail. Kicks at floors
like air-less tires.
Wheels spin, their thread-less bobbins
sewing something, going
somewhere in mirage.
She stares at me as if I have
a secret in my pocket cup,
some melody I'm holding back,
some unpopped kernal in a bag.
Youth is a tramp that uses her street,
too busy to watch moonlight's curve
on pebbles scattered by rain.
Aids pass by, their sympathy,
the gut wretch kind, a frozen sonnet,
taught to be cold since love isn't safe
when hope could dissolve
at the drop of a russet leaf.
Darkling plains of aging flesh
belong at home, where
hands lotion the sharp moors,
where a moan is met by willing ear,
where riots of sadness sleep
and love is a full deck of torn cards,
confounding the lousy deal.
The best I can do for a smile
is the line of a cracked nut.
-- Janet Buck