Twenty-Two

I buried a boy in the backyard
In the fronded shards of ferns
That hem the sycamore like silk.
Twenty-one and toddler by turns,
We die once a year, I’ve learned.

Out in the street,
Brawlers crawl and scratch and scream
Over gobbets of gibblets in the midsummer heat,
And the blood stains black their rotting teeth,
Angry like the inkblot on the page underneath
The saint’s obituary.

In the stadium,
Rainmakers throw haymakers
At price-takers with pacemakers,
Trying to ride the electric
Tide to the static sea,
And every trembling treble beat
Is a wave against the breaker.

I navigate the crowd where the warcries,
Shrill and loud, rise in profusion
Like a gathering cloud that lies
Against the slumbering sky;
A threadworn, shredded shroud,
Concealing the crimson contusion
Of the sailless sun who still wallows
In the astral shallow hollows alone,
Yet proud.

An illiterate poet spoke up and said:

"When words are bullets,
The difference between murder and mercy
Is a sugared shell of compliments,
Layered levels of sweet sentiments
Like sediments around the molten core."

I knew it then and I’ve forgotten since,
To dance with our laughable impermanence,
To smile with every cringe and wince,
To meet and defeat our ghostly sins,
To forego fission on behalf of fusion.

The price of knowing has always been
The worst kinds of confusion.