IN MEMORIAM

after Verlaine

 

This evening, I do not like the way the sun sets in gray ash on the horizon, or how the twilight leaves such a bitter taste, like tears mingled with a shiver. I do not like the smell of roses picked to be braided into crowns or gathered into garlands, nor the lingering scent of a violet born in the shadow of cypresses. Tomorrow on the green hill, there will be a new grave with a new name because death blew on a budding flower and a tempest broke a sapling. If your weight is light to those whose age has overwhelmed too many days and nights, I find you quite heavy, O inexorable earth, when you weigh thus.

 

A WHOLE BASKET FULL OF DEAD SNAKES

 

The Mistake won’t stop blogging about me, I say.

No one reads blogs, The Dark Lady says, adding,

No one reads poetry either. Why should you care?

I ignore the dig because she has a point,

But then again, so do I.

Why can’t she be more like you? I say.

Jesus. I wish we could just get divorced twice,

The Mistake can’t even get being an ex-wife

Right. Charming, The Dark Lady says.

Exactly, I say, though technically I’m not

Agreeing with her, charming in much the same way

That Marburg virus is charming.

Whatever, The Dark Lady says.

No, seriously, I say, forgetting about The Mistake,

Marburg is an awesome thing,

And now, since there’s no stopping me,

The Dark Lady takes a deep pull and snorts

Menthol smoke like a bored, middle-aged dragon

With giant fake breasts.

It’s a zoonotic filovirus related to Ebola,

Possibly vectored through Egyptian fruit bats—

These are cute little cat/rat/bird beasties,

I say, that work hard to pollinate the ageless Baobab,

Whose fruit wanders the continents of flavor

From vanilla to pear to grapefruit.

At this point, I give her the jazz hands,

And she takes another drag in resignation.

It’s a hemorrhagic fever that makes you vomit

And cry blood until all of your organs fail

And you die. The Soviets even tried to turn it

Into a weapon, but they didn’t do so well

And some dude croaked in the process.

Charming, The Dark Lady says. And I know

Exactly what she means.

 

LIBRARY

 

This forgotten bookshelf indicts the heads

Of failed lovers: how dare they give way when

So much consolation, so much inspired

Sweetness insists in stronger dependencies?

How these volumes ache with every unturned

Emptiness—just the stack behind the bed

Is full of mysteries, strange and burned

Letters sink into silence, dried and dead.

De-collated edges and flyspecks,

Mountains of words wilt from one century

To the next: beautiful faces, a vortex

Of sweet pilgrimages to some grassy

Tomb. Unfamiliarity is a gate

That keeps all would-be lovers from their fate.