A Chair for Weary Legs

I don't know if I ever thought I would be a part of this program; and I find myself a little confused about my role in this operation. Should I be comforting those stares and herds of nervous people I see out there? Should I be passing out water, arranging family interviews, silently wandering through the backstage, guiding the performance? I wonder at the time, and I think this is the time when I would be speaking to Darmell, setting up the witnesses in their positions and checking the time for the reporting logs.

He asks me my final words, it's not Lynd, I look up to an empty stranger, who knows none of it, none of me. Of course they had the decency to send a stranger, not a friend, though it wasn't for my sake, and I'm sure Lynd had to petition for the respite. They wouldn't think of those things themselves. I never had.

So what was the specimen thinking before death? they all knew they couldn't know after, and so they must wait until the very last minute, until I brushed against the icy wall, so much worse because I groped out for it; not passing though in natural time, but in tense expectation of the cold. I panicked at the microphone at my mouth, hadn't thought of my last words, I had no symphony to play for the few people that would remember and record my last sound, the last tones in the carbon dioxide I polluted into the air. My voice failed me,


"Am I going to die?"


I hardly knew what I said, but the world went away as the hood came down, and I felt very strongly that I was still waiting in my cell room, with my scratchy blanket against my face, dreading death, not facing it. that I was asleep in my apartment, fearing the sound of my alarm, afraid of waking up.

Ears Full of Salt

My Ears are sweetly calling

to my hands,

to rub away my tears.

The tears that rivered over

Down my cheeks,

to pool into my Ears.

My tears are drying

in streaks across my face;

and filling in my Ears

with their only trusted friend.

And my Ears are filling sweetly,

with their salt to remind me

Of what my tears have said.

The Last Word

I thought we promised we wouldn't do this.
I thought I'd broken every pencil,
in my dusty cocoa mug.
I thought I'd bled every single pen into my sink;
draining the stains I used to use so freely.
But now it sits like a beady eyed bug,
It looks balefully at me.
And I hate it gladly.
One word more and I could float it in the river
to slide its reaching veins across the paper,
to its soggy edge.
And stain the edges like the drain of my bathroom sink,
where I thought you snapped the neck,
of every lousy word I ever met.
But perhaps no one was watching,
and one last word got caught in my throat.
So I'll quickly kill it on one last page.
Before your reaching hands can stop it.

An Unknown kind of Hate

I hate you the way I love the bones of my neck
how they crinkle when I twist it to look behind me
How my spine shrugs away stiffness
I hate to find you kind
because you aren't
I hate to find you calm
because my skin remembers
the awful raw feeling you drew.
I'll tell you
I'll even send you this note
because I know you won't understand a single word of it
when you wake in the morning
and I know you will hate the note.
The way I love the bones in my neck.

Burning Daisies

The flowers bloom across the sky;

Their bowing heads droop ashes,

Upon the dewy grass of night.

The daisies rush into the sky,

To live one dazzling second.

Their lives burn out above my head,

Until their wilted buds

Hang embers in the sky.

And this boquet held in my hand,

Is brushed away in whispers

of sudden aging smoke.

Shining Lakes

High up the sloping mountain

In the valley down below,

The Earth's soft curve is brightened

With a gilded water's glow.

The sun breaks over captured glass

That smarts the eyes with tears;

And fleeting must the glancer grasp

The burning sweet of broken mirrors.

And down the sloping mountain,

While the sun burns in the sky,

The lakes will slumber down the way,

And drink the tears the sun will cry.

Another Emptied Chair

A quiet boy I don't even know

Sits across from me.

Who keeps his eyes on his plate,

And his hands on his fork.

Until he leaves without a sound,

And I stare at the empty seat.

And I have the thought,

That the empty seat is me.

An empty seat at our crowded lunch table

Filled with noise.

That's not so crowded,

And not so filled.

And I have the thought,

That it really doesn't matter

If there is another chair;

If I'm there or not.

I'm just another seat to fill,

Another seat to your left;

Left empty.

The Hurdle

Maybe I am once

a scraggly bush,

by an old hiker's path.

Maybe I have once
towered over ocean air,

and whistled over seas.

Perhaps I dreamed of flying

and brushing up the sky.

Perhaps I'm used for climbing;

a slender branch for you to pass

and push on by.