To go along dying and singing
~Cesar Vallejo
To go along
living and breathing
into
a world that is dying, cloves
knocking into lungs, the bloody
raincoat of love, that poor shrub
of a spouse spilling always, a multitude
of whiny details.
Misery,
complaints, traffic, the cost
of things, etcetera etcetera.
Forty years,
you'd think I'd have learned
each groove in the rock I call my life
by now. You'd think.
I run my hand along the banister of days
and come up with splinters.
I build a bed to die in and my daughter calls
on the telephone requesting to borrow
a mattress.
The audience I think I have is not real.
The lover I thought was mine is so far gone
by morning it would take a time machine
to find him.
All my
dreams draw up beside me
wagging
their tails.
As I reach
to pat their heads,
an
hysteria of teeth and nails.
