the grave robbers

everyone picks out their favorite corpse
and we all waltz around the room. angry Edward
has himself a drink of brackish swampwater and twirls
his late lover around three full spins, with his
arm extended. sad Frank sits in
a cold corner, complaining to his dead mother
of a mysterious woman he’d met, who’d kept him
up nights and never returned his phone calls.
an elderly gentleman holds a fragile, old-fashioned
granny in a grizzly death-grip, and it’s unsure
which is the one who is expired. and then
there’s Eleanor in her elegant dress,
Eleanor who I love, with a rip in her dirt-darkened
chest, a hole which partially exposes
her tender heart. and she’s always been a lady
who’d wait for you to open the door, with
an indulgent smile and a soft word of thanks,
and she waltzes so well.

and we don’t dance to forget, and we don’t dance
to remember. we simply dance to dance one last
time, as weak candles cast our strong shadows
against the cement walls and ceilings. we steal them back
for a single night, for the simple pleasure of extending
our hands one last time, in spite of
extenuating circumstances.

styrofoam electrons

trying to find the shortest way
to a house, flitting in between highways,
trying to get there in eleven minutes
or less. if able, attempting to keep
from running over anybody on the
way. worried but not overly
concerned. the atoms of the brain
are bigger than the dust which
fills the air, the atoms are something
you could eat, like cotton candy.
if you see a light, walk toward it, and keep
on going straight until one street becomes
another, then take the highway until
you're nearly there, and make sure
to get lost at least once per avenue,
or every time you see a yellow light. don't
slow down, you're almost there, you almost
have a home. you almost have a home.

darkest memory

in my dark, in my
most moist gelatinous membranes
i feel, what i feel for you, in the dark,
before a punch, before a drunken stupor,
even when we bleed. dark smiles,
shut eyes, dead minds, hearts, we feel.
we felt once, long ago, humans.
before the christ, before the fall
and the false redemption. in my,
in your death throes, the flailing, the
meaningless end of existence. moments
of pity and sympathy, felt outward-in,
upon every single surface a smudge.
left alone, a heart in the dark, smudged
with tiny pricks of life. simple patterns,
out of the darkness of pre-creation,
recreated randomly for the enjoyment
of all. each in blossom, in decay. the
flutter of lost souls creating a wind upon
the cheek as they softly leave the evening ether
into the unprotected darkness of the night.