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07-23-2010, 04:38 AM
Another poem from several years ago not much changed from the original write, editing suggestions welcome.
The Poem I Wrote for Your Funeral
(Which No one and Everyone Heard)
Mushrooms cut and flat on wood.
Browning flesh-bone breaks on my teeth,
and misses again the home mud, the mass of earth,
the purring wing-speckled brightness. Time’s veins
gushing with liquid light, the old trees
holding up the sky like a table under
which they slowly lived, and softly,
in shadow, died. In the crowd of
supermarkets, when all the world’s moss
alchemized to metal by some
wizardry of hunger
they wanted to shout,
As you are talking
you do not hear me
because dying is
so quiet.
It is like
when sun sets into snow and every frozen
flake hears the glow shattering to rainbow.
Knows God is in them finally in them,
finally everywhere at once, but going
so fast away – and this place, deaf-cold
and lipless cannot express this one
thing: Love. It is like
a condom lying beside a bed of sighing
bodies, sweat born, flesh-worn, making out
the patterns in the ceiling as they don’t
look at each other because they can’t
because they are ashamed of
how much they have done and
how quickly.
And they can’t pick up the small
shrunken snake skin filled still
with some life wriggling
in the wet dreaming of
a home unknown.
They cannot accept
it is over and they are still
alone.
It is like when I saw you
dead in a purple coffin
and then paid for it all,
and saw in strange handwriting
the list:
one coffin
twelve dozen roses,
music accompaniment: one harp and one singing lady,
two hours a parlor,
a plate of mushrooms stuffed with caviar,
a face I loved transfixed on
one descending angel, bathed in quietness and music
all at once, in one hand your hand,
in the other a strand of light
endless, imperceptible, and perfect.
The Poem I Wrote for Your Funeral
(Which No one and Everyone Heard)
Mushrooms cut and flat on wood.
Browning flesh-bone breaks on my teeth,
and misses again the home mud, the mass of earth,
the purring wing-speckled brightness. Time’s veins
gushing with liquid light, the old trees
holding up the sky like a table under
which they slowly lived, and softly,
in shadow, died. In the crowd of
supermarkets, when all the world’s moss
alchemized to metal by some
wizardry of hunger
they wanted to shout,
As you are talking
you do not hear me
because dying is
so quiet.
It is like
when sun sets into snow and every frozen
flake hears the glow shattering to rainbow.
Knows God is in them finally in them,
finally everywhere at once, but going
so fast away – and this place, deaf-cold
and lipless cannot express this one
thing: Love. It is like
a condom lying beside a bed of sighing
bodies, sweat born, flesh-worn, making out
the patterns in the ceiling as they don’t
look at each other because they can’t
because they are ashamed of
how much they have done and
how quickly.
And they can’t pick up the small
shrunken snake skin filled still
with some life wriggling
in the wet dreaming of
a home unknown.
They cannot accept
it is over and they are still
alone.
It is like when I saw you
dead in a purple coffin
and then paid for it all,
and saw in strange handwriting
the list:
one coffin
twelve dozen roses,
music accompaniment: one harp and one singing lady,
two hours a parlor,
a plate of mushrooms stuffed with caviar,
a face I loved transfixed on
one descending angel, bathed in quietness and music
all at once, in one hand your hand,
in the other a strand of light
endless, imperceptible, and perfect.