On the Green Board
In yellow chalk
One of my students wrote a poem
IF YOU CANT
GIVE US GOOD GRADES
THEN WHY NOT DIE DOC ? ? ? ?
I don’t care anything about their poem
Maybe I should squirt some rhyme &
Meter in so I can care even less
Truly I’d rather be anywhere else
Than near these lines
Maybe Having sex with Ginger Lynn or
Riding my new October Harley
Around the rain-slick leaf-layered
Gorgeous curves of West Virginia
.
The Satan I Know
Has three vaginas &
Four penises
He likes us all
He waves us on to exhaustion
He wants us to find new microbes
And cheers especially
For the sexless
Who own only their last breaths
And dress in moth-eaten prayer shawls
So they resemble
The shadows
Beneath fresh corpses
Happy to be on a crash diet
At the big birthday party in the rear-view mirror
.
Our Friends Die
Most of our enemies
Keep on breathing
Whose fault is it
The Light
The Shadow
Should we blame
The sun
And say its light
Goes on forever creating new shadows
At last I can provide
An answer
All my high school coaches
Have finally
Been buried underground
A few of my old buddies remain
Skeptics
They keep asking
Anyone who will listen
Even the Pope
Are they really dead
How did they know
.
7
I am sorry sir We don’t know exactly what
happened Strange it is the child named Jack
with brown hair and brown eyes disappeared
He was playing right over there On the curb
In the gutter if you will I thought I saw was
a candy wrapper there a moment ago It’s so
windy in this part of the park at times I am
sure that child was carrying several items I
think A small plastic boat A gyroscope and a
compass He seemed abstracted Those toys
were absorbing all his attention Then he was
gone
.
Refilling the Shells for Skeet Practice
Quarter-inch buckshot
To create an absence in the air
As I fill
This tree-green
Shells full
Letters form below
On white paper
Mainly O’s
Some Y’s
If I traced letters
In the powder below
Would it bear the sound of my name
Which part of myself Brain or Heart
Would I carefully aim at?