there is a pill for your fury 

Time,dressed as Daffy Duck,crawls on hands and knees
across a nun bleached floor.Aqua,urea,petrolatum,
when nothing more is said and all is done then we remain.
90% cracked foot cream.

The sound of Bach noodling masks collective tongues
wheezing.Leaving

all you bequeath to me, a rich fusty smell like canned peas
in brine and a fist sized photograph of weeping angst.
Yours,hers and mine.

Nothing will be finished,nothing new begun

she salutes the passing trees

She salutes the passing trees the
rib eye steaks the painted sheep,
skirts boxy fields of peacetime steeples
dropped like an address

She counts the numbers to fend off sleep
96 is a number
13 is a number
72 is a number*

She counts to one,
skirts boxy field of idling shells
salutes by numbers passing trees the
rib eye steaks the sheep marked loose leaf
khaki hunter green neglected red and
seasink blue,painted
to tally not counted to mourn.

*a chest freezer of torn roe deer. That is a number too.
Or numbers. Depending on whether you are counting just the chest freezer or each deer

Bobbing

I will tell no tall,sea stories of how
you arrived on this earth with a softish splash
but I will weep till you are a boat,
sitting proud and bobbing on a sea of women’s salt

Anonymous*

I will not shine your shoes with the sweep of my hair.
Wait. Maw wide. With sucked and butter lips.
Bend freely to a willing killing.
Kneel swole in the skin of another.
Hole fishnets.
Drink cold from your cups,
a Lost Mary with collapsible legs,
a submission snapped at the knees.
Believe a sunken pledge of a smell of brine,a swallow of honey.
Grow anonymous,grainy and grey
for any unblended human.
Listen. No.
I will not shine your shoes with the sweep of my hair.

*the first photograph of a human being,your last thought

Psalm for implausible birth parents

At a distant hem,empty as a pram.

I retraced each step from the fist cigarette,fell back
in a knot on the memory foam of
a misplaced marital bed.

I loved you better as a vague notion. Better
as an uncountable thing. Better
as an assembly of dog treats.
A convenient bundling hour. Better
as a half baked plan.
I loved you uneventfully.

So I smothered my grief with a heavy dusting of talc. Enough
to make a cake of my soul.