Thursday, May 19, 2011

In Some Respects

That winter evening on Lake Michigan,
the Black Ship sailed water clear as vodka
from Muskegon to Sheboygan.

The Big Lake was placid and clean.

My old man said the sun
had a score to settle with Wisconsin.

He said: Don't buy no hope from that
long shot
. He said all kinds of things
I don't think you need to know.

The smallest sparks
fell from his Lucky Strike.

That was five years
before he quit smoking.

Friday, May 06, 2011

Then the River Swelled Its Chest & Blew & Blew

The first decade of the century
tossed embittered stones & spring-melt
cigarette butts at a lonely boy.

The kid pretended they were Army men.

He pretended these toy soldiers
hunted down & killed a villain,
posed for digital pictures with the body

before dumping it from a helicopter
into an unnamed ocean. He pretended
they called it a burial at sea.

He pretended the end of something,
the beginning of something else.