Blaring Rachmaninoff and others,
I try to remember, among clattering Claws.
The silent graves, slanted for October, beckon
Our feet in shoes impressed
On the birches, marching
On the concavenous reservoir.
“Pull over,” I said, “I’m finna yerk.”
Hopped fence. Beyond hype city—; outside
The womb of orange ambience, rarefied
Now over the sway of green halos. How can such
An undarkness mingle? How can
The dead sleep so peacefully. His phone flash
Split the air
Into a ridge.
Into a ridge.
“We’re close,” he said. This is serious business.
The car doors were still open, Paganini drifted
Gracing ears, the leaves eroding to sailboats dug
Into the ground in strange, morbid poses.
Walking the curve of the stone wall
Whose ballast keels vertically and also curves,
Imitating the savior, tired, without arms, fostering
The sleepers, the dreamers.
Our flashlights converge, reveal:
JACKSON BASHAR BARAKAH
1999 - 2020
We are wordless, sober, thrashing in the heart
With what will be an unknown voracity.
The Master says, “She like the way I rrr,”
And then we go away.
“Merci Beaucoup”
Merci beaucoup!
Morning rears against a crude, defenseless
Nightfall.
Merci beaucoup,
Merci beaucoup.
