Joey Cloudy online

TASTE OF DEATH BUT ONCE

TASTE OF DEATH BUT ONCE

It’s hard to think when the dogs sniffing the floor,

yardman’s lawn mowers whining, the garbage trucks hydraulics 

crunchy hiss as the diesel engine growls.

The radios playing trip hop and your old lady’s 

massaging your nuts.  Still 

you go on, remembering 

that others have had it worse.  Lorca got it 

in the skull by fascist.  Villon 

on a rainy day in Paris

by poverty.  Plath in a homemade gas chamber 

in England. Crane rejected leapt 

off a steamer into the Gulf of Mexico

 and swim out to the dark sea. Others less 

romantic put the shotgun to the head and left

Pollack’s on the wall behind them or on the ceiling 

a macabre fresco of brain bone and blood.

They found Kees’ car on the San Francisco Bay bridge.  

The drugs stopped working and he was afraid 

that he would be found out.

America destroys more artiest than it creates.  

You wonder, looking around the room, who will be next.

I mourn the loss of any creative being

There are so few of them as it is.  Modern day shaman 

searching for the holy vision in the lost and found line of a poem.

You wonder if the pain in your side is kidney stones

or a hernia or a pinched nerve in your back.  Like tracing a short

in a cars electrical system it’s hard to find the source.  An 

injured spine can cause your stomach to hurt.  Every movement 

brings a symphony of agony.  the pain makes you

 nauseous.  When ordinary men would be waiting 

in the emergency room waiting for doctors 

and drugs and miracle cures.  You eat the pain.  

A note pad for a shield an ink pen for a spear 

you have something worth writing 

about.  No Spartan, still, 

Our stoic mother offers lipless smiles 

from the boney grave.