An Amateur Poet Takes a Break From Life
Sometimes, I do a great Leonard Cohen impression
because I'm a natural at playing dead,
but most of us are.
Because I'm a natural at playing dead,
I only sing in the shower
and mouth my poems to an empty room.
But most of us are
trying to triumph at something on Sunday mornings,
when there's nothing better to do.
So Obviously Dying
We still only have a handful of earth
filling palms best left unread
because the ending was ruined
long before we were ever born,
and the firs watch my house
like someone trying not the stare
at another so obviously dying.
There's still reasons for war too,
for guts knocked from stomachs,
as if they belong in the dirt,
for hatred to massage the back of my eyes
until red is my favourite colour,
for boring speeches that bleed away minutes,
only to become memorable due to the applause.
The crimson “sold” sticker murders
the “For Sale” sign on a front lawn,
while the foundation cracks,
but the roof was reshingled last May,
when hammers hammered so much,
they were successful in a poor imitation
of gunshots winning and losing an endless battle.
Deaths as deep as an ice cream scoop,
where a crowd's whisper is malnourished
enough to remind one of humanity's
insatiable hunger
we try desperately to satisfy with desserts
on Sundays or free refills on coffee,
while the clinking of stirring spoons
crack open a shared silence,
so to sound like the truest love
poem, instead of page 19
in a corpse's collected works,
which lives on a coffee table
until a thrift store purgatory
proves the devil prefers best sellers
and god a bigger fan of fiction.
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