Poems from “You Can Be the Last Leaf”
APRIL 4, 2023
Lovers Swap Language
the way enemies exchange stabs:
he takes a word from her lexicon
and she takes one from his book.
That’s how poems are made
and also bigoted speeches.
And when lovers and enemies sleep,
the ether carries a hot hum
the universe digests unaffected.
We Could Die in a Traffic Accident
Or after a long protracted illness that makes others wish us dead.
A flash food might do it after heavy rain.
A forgotten bomb from a previous war
or a fresh bomb from an ongoing one.
A virus heretofore unknown.
Or a well-known virus that doctors and pharmacists got bored with
and missed its reappearance.
We might stop breathing: there are too many of us on the planet.
Or in a famine our spouses will eat us.
And in excess our arteries will clog up.
Smoking kills.
Lack of pleasure.
Too much sex.
A fire from a scented candle.
A depressed driver.
A jealous husband.
A rookie burglar.
And we could die of waiting for death.
Nothing new in any of it,
no insight or learned lessons.
Only the facts
in present and continuing actions.
I Suffer a Phobia Called Hope
Each time I hear that word
I recall the disappointments
that were committed in its name:
the children who don’t return,
the ailments that are never cured,
the memory that’s never senile,
all of them hope crushed
beneath its wings as I smash
this mosquito on my daughter’s head.
✺
The grieving have only the unknown.
It’s their only staple and inheritance.
Pain has no logic. All things redeem
the grieving except your rational questions.
✺
I wish that no one goes
and no one comes.
All going is a stroke of myth
and each return
a punctured lung.