I Wandered Among the Gravestones on Memorial Day
I wandered among the gravestones on Memorial Day,
alone and pensive,
lost in a peaceful stone garden of names.
I watched footsteps,
saw the blooms and the banners.
I read the names of those who lied there.
“Delilah,
childhood sweetheart and beloved wife—
1909-1989.”
Beside her lay her husband, Frank.
1909-1999.
He survived ten years without her
after a lifetime of pure love,
of sharing the world
and every joy in it.
Could he even live one day
in those ten long years?
I had no reason to mourn.
No one had died.
I was a foreign spirit,
drifting, watching,
and imagining.
“Baby Thomas:
Until we meet again.
August 3-10, 1937.”
A girl clutched her dying newborn,
his fated face spotted with raindrops
and hers a tapestry of despair
as together they wailed.
The father stood apart,
slammed the wall,
and choked on his heart.
They buried their son
seven days after his birth,
but how long did they live?
I continued my wanderings
and stopped at
“Lily.”
“My perfect bride, I shall wait for you.”
The husband’s name was carved,
but his end was yet to come.
On her side,
the earth was just beginning to sprout again.
Somewhere, he lived.
Somewhere, he was crying yet.
Somewhere, he was learning to live without her,
after just loving to live with her.
Somewhere,
a man was already dead.
Suddenly I saw—
through the calm peace of May,
an autumn flash, the ivory eye
and her wretched tears pouring
on the shoulders of a lonely man,
crouched and trembling in the garden—
“Rachel.
My perfect bride, I shall wait for you.”
He lifted his weary head.
Though his face was blinded by water
and twisted with fire,
I knew him.
I turned from Lily’s grave,
choking as he had.
I walked,
afraid and unsure.
Was it prophecy?
Was it imagination?
I blinded myself to the image,
but branded words left their scar:
Someday,
I will lose her.
My wandering done, I passed from the stones,
yet what I learned would never leave:
Someday,
the flowers will bear my signature on Memorial Day.
Someday,
long before I join my cold bride in the enriched soil,
we will die together.
Sonnet 19
The devil wants me dead; I half agree.
My childhood fades with every rising sun,
and I am told my life will always be
the torture I now face: I want to run
until my lungs explode with atmosphere;
my traitor home has turned, for I soon leave
and never will return; I long to hear
the truth about forever and believe
in what is held for proving it; and sleep,
it leads me like a lover to my bed,
yet there is only glass for broken feet
and dragon years to slay before I rest.
Each use of time is wasting it away.
If this is life, then may I die today.
Sonnet 9
To be in love, condition potent-pure,
is letting go of self, of time, of care,
and falling down without a hope of cure
and finding that it’s much more happy there.
To be in love is like a state of death
when she, your love, is gone from out of sight.
Your chest constricts without your lover’s breath
to keep your soul from leaving overnight.
To be in love is working to the bone
and never wanting something in return.
Enough it is to never feel alone
and feel white comfort’s coolness ease your burns.
To be in love is wanting nothing more
than being with one person evermore.
Stare
He comes every night. The ghost. As if we were standing on the floor and facing each other, he floats just out of reach and he stares at me. He never moves. Never speaks. Only stares. When I lie down to sleep at night, he is there. When I jolt awake from a nightmare, he is there. If I leave my room and return, he waits for me there, hovering above the bed, staring at the vacant pillow. Only when sunlight shines through the windows does he fade away, but he reappears when night falls. To stare.
I know how he died. He was stabbed in the chest. Sometimes his ripped and twisted wound drips blood on me. I wash the sheets. But he never tells me how it happened. He never tells me who it was. He looks at me as if he wants me to find out for him, perhaps to avenge him. But I do not know the ghost’s name. I do not know how long ago he lived. I believe that he used to sleep in the bed I now call my own, but he has never told me so. I can only guess. All I really know of him is his blood and his face.
I used to be afraid. The first few weeks, I barely slept. I screamed, and then I shut my eyes, and then I tried to pretend he wasn’t there, but he was, always floating, staring. He never threatened me, and soon I began to speak to him as I would to a friend. I tell him everything. I tell him of my work, of my friends, of my hopes, dreams, fears, shortcomings. I know he hears me; it is when I tell him of my love that he bleeds the most.
Sometimes I stare back. I look into his eyes. I read his face. I try to understand what is written there. It is something awful. Something painful, something desperate. Something he wants me to understand. I try to listen. I wait for a sign. For a movement of the eyes, for a breath from the lips, but nothing, nothing ever happens. He only stares with his black eyes, those dark circles beneath dark hair under which lies some dark and empty space. Something so barren and hollow, it keeps him here. It keeps him coming back every night. It is something so horrible that he can never rest until he makes me understand. But try as I might, I learn nothing new. I only sleep, and he, my nighttime guardian, watches me until morning.
I do not know how long it will be until he leaves me alone. I do not even know that I wish it. This ghost, who was once a man, with a message eternally in his eyes, may never leave. Perhaps when I die, I will join him and finally ask him what he was trying to tell me all along.
But until then, I will tell him goodnight and close my eyes while he continues staring on.
Two Wrongs…
“What I did was not only legal,” he told me. “It was right.”
An old adversary who has escaped from prison
was serving life for murder
who had their own blood spilled
He loaded his .22 rifle in the van and took off.
“Even if you could extinguish that instinct, should you?”
That shoot was on the beach
This young innocent kid is
knocked to the ground by three men with sawed-off shotguns
“At first I thought it was a joke,
but then,”
He put the animal in his sights and pulled the trigger.
in the back of the head
Graphic scenes of gunshot victims spurting blood
“The cat dropped like a rock,” he said.
fired 50 rounds
A fallen victim’s body is riddled with gunfire as blood spurts across the screen
And yes, they can bleed.
Being pursued by the police
was likely under the influence
He then smashed through several walls of a ranch house
the accident ended a four-minute, high-speed chase
“it took five or six cops to hold him down.”
“Anyway, the cops pulled me over and searched my van and found the gun, and –”
authorities allegedly found a gun in their luggage
“What kind of man hits a kid?”
Today’s front-page headline:
A California man was arrested after a gun was fired during a fight
he was found guilty and sentenced by a jury to death…
Others can indeed bleed. And now they do.
Booth’s Wish
Keep your eyes wide open, if you can.
This show’s the last that you will ever see.
The shadows: wide enough to hide a man
and perfect depth to swallow one like me.
The voices quiet, ‘hush!’ and soften.
Lights dim low; act three begins.
You always tried to live like Lincoln;
now your soul will rest with him.
Keep your eyes wide open.
Fingers, please don’t slip.
My breath is harsh and broken
as I’m reaching for the grip.
And with a true
and sudden jab,
this knife into
your back I stab.
Your chest, it catches, hangs,
and you slump into your seat.
I veil the bloodied fang
and I hasten my retreat.
No one sees until I slip away,
and then begins the shouting and unrest.
And oh, how much I wish that I could stay
and keep my eyes wide open for the rest!
