Joey Cloudy online

TASTE OF DEATH

“Come back with your shield – or on it”

(Plutarch, Mor.241)

the parting cry of Spartan mothers to their sons.

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

yard mans lawnmower whining, the hydraulic crush of garbage trucks,

the radio 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.

some leap off the boat and swim out to see, others less 

romantic put the shotgun to the head and leave 

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

a macabre fresco of brain bone and blood.

All they found of Keyes was his abandoned car 

Parked in the middle of the San Francisco Bay bridge.  

The drugs stopped working and was he afraid 

that he would be found out to be queer.

America destroys more artist than it creates.  

You wonder looking around the room who will be next.

I mourn the loss of any creative being

there’s so few of them as it is.  Modern day shaman 

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

And 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 of the problem.  An 

injured spine can cause your stomach to hurt.  Every movement 

brings a symphony of agony.  the pain has you nauseous.  When ordinary 

men would be writhing 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,  Your stoic mother offers lipless smiles from the grave.