Just for a Thrill: Poems

Stomp

STOMP The parade is bound to get louder now more insistent even as the ground rumbles the choices left are the limited ones a red sphere with its wrinkled face the hole just left of the stem the sign that trespassing is spoken here & if what looks green in this light —as worn as everything here is it’s hard to tell— is at least unmarked, unwrinkled, well then— 17 * our choices are sorrow the blues or pity cross the street & try again We took your side & argued till we were blue in the face as if that would’ve made you feel better about the whole thing Events might have turned out differently but no one could compete with those cryptic messages 18 * it’s easy enough to make sense call him a name & say it’s an identification use some tropes from old economics books —who doesn’t know them all by now— as I think of you lying amid droppings & torn newspapers 19 * truth is—as long as we consent— we live in a democracy & can choose our tormentors but none of those present asked for the broken promise breaking through the still wind’s veil we can only aspire to imitate the light at the bottom of a hill where century-old houses feel the earth’s trembling sigh 20 * the day we came to visit one carried an ax another a lock & chain four others hoisted a coffin —our civilization— the musicians didn’t show but there was lots of shouting & dancing what else can you do after what’s happened 21 * no one mentioned you all afternoon how you split without a proper good-bye leaving us to explain everything how a cipher greeted the ironic exhortation it turns out no one heard us either —who bore fresh figs & flowers on our visit— the rain holding off as we wound through the streets to our prearranged rendezvous where we tried to be convincing but it was as if a damp wind took the music & spread it like a sheet over the aging grass our only comfort remaining the knowledge of your stilled chatter 22 ...