LatinosUSA

A Dead Kiss

Listening to Ronnie Drew
sing about a time dead enough
to need the afterlife
that’s born from music,
and the way it was
was different, which some hate,
even if others back then didn’t think
about future history books
as they made love,
leaving the present feeling
like a dried-out flower
that could easily be dismissed
as trash or a dead kiss
from a lover
who’s never coming back.

~~

Pseudohistory

Watching an old sitcom
become a history lesson,
where the canned laughter
seems like it could be
an artifact
no one will ever dig up
or argue proves something
about an ancient civilization
easily dismissed as pseudohistory.

~~

Chacone

If Bach’s violin is mourning
a dead wife, it turns notes
into tears and the applause
from the crowd becomes
a eulogy for someone
who died before any of us
were born,
which probably makes time
hate itself even more
for clapping along
with everyone else.

~~

Perdition

Days as flat as dollar bills
remind me of people
bragging about making six figures
before inflation deflated that boast,
only for making wine
with apple juice and baker’s yeast
to become the blood
to a salvation
we’ll eventually crucify
with enough time.

~~

The Preciousness of It All

I thought about a 300 KM detour
to see a grave for a writer
I never met, and realized this poem
is probably a better use of time
and the tread left on my tires,
but the preciousness of it all
made me hate how easily we fall
into the shallow grave we call living,
like criticizing ourselves
for having a morbid fascination
with reading birth and death dates
on stranger’s tombstones
after realizing there’s more dead
in a cemetery than just the one
person we thought important
enough to visit.