Mr. Henry Bones (xvi)

Stentorian tongue, I’ve ratted you out.

Silence is the only option

free to everyone.  Take-out

is the shut-in’s only option.

When they come to collect, odds are

you’re already home.

You know where my heart lies,

but still you missed.

Where is that other girl who said she’d sleep

through the end of the world?

Her body is what I’ve missed

all these years, all these lies.

The oak sows the lawn

with leaves.  Every last acorn has slipped

into the craws of squirrels.  Your feet

leave the grass a blank.  I eat

your hoarded food.  All night I’ve lain

beside you, your face blank.

Elixir of Mortality

In the ninth century, a team of Chinese alchemists trying to synthesize an “elixir     of immortality” from saltpeter, sulfur, realgar, and dried honey instead invented gunpowder.

~Discover Magazine

In hope the alchemists set the flame, and the flame

blew up.  Another failure to be drowned in water.

Another sorrow to be drowned in liquor.  And alcohol, too,

was first meant to be medicinal.  Her father died

and she was depressed, so I took her for a ride.  One drink,

then four. I recover from the bathroom floor

not hoping for more, but her face is an unmade bed.

I judge the girl a drunken mess, and in that moment

am redeemed unreliable.  She falls from the barstool

with her knees braced under the bar rim, her hair

a fountain.  I repeat what I’ve been taught:

Love is the key to immortality.  Love also opens

the gates of hell.  I take her sweetness

into my mouth and bring it back to fluid life.

I had a dream, and I clothed that dream in flesh.

How did Lot know she turned to salt?  He did not

look back, and rain melted everything into the earth.

We loved, all with the best of intentions.