Painting and Death

I’m killing my friends.
I’ve been yellowing their teeth,
graying their hair, washing
their veins to white and purple.
I pervert the cells
of liver and lung; colon and skin;
create ocean wrecks;
airplane disasters;
I root the senses in dementia.

Fast or slow – the quarrel is pointless:
If I can kill them, they live
and help me wear away that life.

Like a battery dying
and panicking about that,
it’s not real when my selves simply slough:
I’d rather kill them
and draw pictures of the night,
where light deepens the dusk,
snow dust glows in the opening woods,
becoming a picture of a waterfall,
fully chaotic.

Behind that veil is a table
and on it,
breakfast.

But it is late in the day
when I wake, stunned,
creaking from death-sleep.
I stretch or eat or not:
the routines have disappeared.
Breath goes in or out.
Sometimes, there are two squirrels
running the trees, chattering.
I sit, write letters for myself to you.

Odd, this life, killing,
and odd, as well, to die,
but maybe I’ll not be so stunned, then.

My Name is Hello

Hanging with the badly-clad
I catch, like moonlight, looks
from doom-filled people.
Work-bound, burrowing muddy air
between room window and windshield,
swearing by a lost
pair of glasses, a digital watch,
at a pace to miss rainbows
but see forsythia, white dogwood.

You won’t crawl near enough
for fear of what else
will flower and flee
this one more lousy weekend.
I use the clouds
to see you in another body,
tree, or stone or someone
behaving like tree or stone.

Jump to a sudden thud
somewhere close
and lock the door –
you think to sleep
but hell, you want
some news, a messenger
or monster coming for you.