the oddest thing

when did you say you were
coming back? I sat in a chair
for a long time

                           my white clothes
were turning blue my eyes were
as tired as old women
holding vigil and melting
candles

              the oddest thing happened
to me today

                       I stopped breathing
and your face appeared

chicken bones

Billy Marshall
                          had a name
right out of the Wild West
and a devil’s grin fat freckles
and messy hair

                            fat lips and
black eyes bloomed from his
dirty fists

                        we dug up a
garbage bag filled with bones
small animal bones a chicken
or a cat why bury an animal
in a garbage bag?

Billy Marshall
                         had nothing
to do with it but it felt like
his kind of menace

                                   it felt like
a bad secret like the PCP and
greasepaint scene from the
Mod Squad

                       the fear of high
school
                falling from the roof

the one who haunts your dreams
doesn’t know you exist

two poems

spider

tiny red spider
you dance on
skinny legs

like Picasso
crawling all over
a piano
            
             like a surgeon
pulling thread
through a suture



gasp

a break in the clouds a gasp
and blue paint falls just like a
sheet of rain

sea creatures raise their claws
over their heads and grasp the
cable that lifts them out

the surest way to nirvana is to
hang to death just ask jesus
just ask these fish