Cruel Month
A Hamlet sky this morning: undecided.
Rain at noon. Fruit trees in bloom. The sex
of pollen in my eyes. I love this time
of year, the beauty and the terror. Use-
or-lose day off, I kill time listening
to bootlegged Dylan albums, lambs’ blood in
his voice. The spruces sway like mastodons,
time’s wheel’s turned prehistoric. Could be any
era, human suffering’s the same.
Oh Tom, relax, my darker angel says,
you know the up-close view is tragic. Praise
the Fates that you’re not weepy. Wimpy maybe.
Ask your mom. Oh snap, she’s dead. You look
like her. At least you haven’t grown a beard.
Étude
The dog and you are lying in the living
room, a golden evening sun outside,
no need to light the fireplace. It’s Glass’s
Études for Piano in your headphones.
Makes you pensive. Maybe it’s the beer.
Or pressure of mortality. You dream
you're with the compost at the curb. You try
to settle down and track the actual,
then find the crack in it that lets the real
and healing light seep in. Last midnight, while
you kissed your lover’s thighs, you thought of what
a poet said: to write a poem, dip
a bucket in the hidden river of
the psyche, see what nourishment comes up.
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