I was thinking today
as I saw a gloss black motorbike helmet
smash into a thousand pieces,
of his fists, shaking
and guilty and not able to get tears
out of a child of stone.
Poetry only makes things worse.
The way
I will always hold my gaze at a tragedy;
and perhaps no one will find the beauty
in their Venus fly trap mentality.
or if a child might have left
a confetti smile in wet glass
picked up from a church puddle.
I would think of how
the sun might splash a new mosaic
through it
onto a strangers face unknowingly.
I've always pictured how I might cope
at your funeral.
It will be different, the whole world
separating from the sky.
I think that only adults cry.
I've seen them
through swollen eyes
dry as stars,
with a child's face carved
in the moon of their knuckles.
I've seen them like thrown puppets.
Slumped glimmering in shop doorways.
Pushed and shoved down steps
like pennies in slot machines.
Watching the snow
for longer than we ever have.
Counting each drop to sleep
like all the pitying coins that fall
softly in velvet cases.
Not feeling the cold.
Only feeling the colour of thier lips;
as though they had kissed a Picasso painting
left out in rain
and watched her endless blue
mascara run.
How quickly you are gone from their memory,
if they have even looked up.
Yet they persist in yours just before sleep.
What I feel most sorry for, though;
is the dogs they keep
on newspaper blankets
with sad harmonica eyes...
Such a wasted companion.
The helmet was useless
as ashes.
People just swerved
around the wrecked bike
as they would sidewalk musicians
with thier fingers tapping the songs
inside pockets of change..
Some clambered to one side of the bus
to get a better view.
Some were frustrated at the delay.
I closed my eyes.
The road and the rain simply washed them away.
Like Sylvia and her suicides...
waiting in the cold for something
or someone that never arrives;
seems to be something I excel at.
I'll always find souvenirs
in my own burnt houses,
but
I'll never find
the girl with the wooden spine
in the wreck of Hesperus.
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