Absence Riff

1. It's A Wonderful Presence

Yes, and what if
you had been born?

with your wheels your faces your habits

If you had been born
Space would have expanded all around you
and energy would have flooded
in waves the color of you
everywhere you went
every day

The way you moved a chair
The way you spoke to that waitress

In your wake, an ever-widening causality

How is it
with so many people in the world
that time and space are not ajumble
with the wreckage from billiions and billions
of little sullen hurricanes going on and on?

How does anything
stand?


2. Without You

Occasionally one fantasizes
about the flash fame
of suicide

or bearing children

But no one ever says the truth at a funeral
that it's the dead who are most guilty
of forgetting


3. Take-Away

Convenience
is the most natural thing

Evolution only runs downhill

We get our food
from roadside stands now
and the killers and the farmers
like underpaid puppeteers
running around behind the black curtain

When the ranchlands
are pulled back under the earth

there will be no more
exotic places

We'll all be crowded onto a mountaintop
trying to be the first
to catch the raindrops as they fall

And we will eat dust and crawl on our bellies
just like in the beginning



for Poetry Instigator