Goodbye, Dream
Near and far from the incarcerator,
and near and far from our brother
good memories ambush the rotten ones.
What are you burning to forget?
Everything between the zilches.
Now the one is gone.
The code of the remembrance-
zero, zero and zero.
Did we remove all the metals from
his heart? Late evening crows scratch
the sky – that poorly polished firmament.
Atrophied
My brother’s grief follows him
to his daybreak toilet
and to our kitchen filled with
claustrophobic aroma of coffee and bread.
Atrophied, I know him,
he grasps for anything that may
haul him by his senses, anything
like those scents, benevolent wrinkles
in the dark cliffs of pain.
The tune our mother has left free
in this household roams shedding
its tickling notes everywhere.
We sneeze a song. I put words
on the tune quite different
from those of my brother’s.
Bad Neighborhood
From the penumbral cave
of one halted building
a bunch of eyes stare at me
still huffing and puffing
from a close encounter with rain.
I disappoint them – neither
a man with money nor
a dealer with crystals.
I have heard people take home
a pocketful of eyes and free
them in a glass cage with cookie crumbs
pollinated walls, and on the powerless
nights watch them light up
blinking good stories from a bad neighborhood.
