Tag Archives: death

Games The Dead Play

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Jackson with the long blonde hair
Hollywood smile
badass black leather jacket and slim frame
gracing the kitchen at a party

I was watching him
from the living room
making some beautiful girl laugh
playing it all up smooth as
silk rippling in a fine french wind
but that was Jackson
last I remember
the thing about this was
that he’s been dead
for fourteen years

Don’t tell me that I’m
crazy or mistaken
it was him all right
the way he moved and tilted his head
when he laughed and looked away

Hell, I could see the scar on his right cheek
from here
I gave it to him when we were sixteen
with a bowie knife
that was supposed to hit a tree

Best days of my youth were
spent that last summer
before his funeral when
we were all seventeen and
all we did was skateboard
drink whiskey
get high

He got all the girls’ numbers
every single one of them
you had to hate a guy like that
if you didn’t like him so much
because Jackson had all the charisma
that the rest of us didn’t he was as pleasing
as a Beatles melody
with his laughter his calm eyes his lack of caring

He was one of those guys that would never die
but then one day he did

I remember well
the way his mother cried at his
open casket
his ashen gray face with the
lips sewn together

When you see someone you know
in such a manner
with all the light gone
their dormant body
just looks like a
cheap rubber suit

Now here we are and
there he is
glancing at me all nonchalant

This even isn’t the first time
I’ve seen him
yeah, he’s been here and there at
parties, festivals, bake sales

I put it all together a while back
that he’s been watching me
following me
but for what?

It appeared there was a game afoot
which rules I did not fully understand

Well, having had enough of this
it was finally time to find out
and get some answers from the
dead man himself
so I set my glass down
and made my way towards the kitchen

Jackson lit a smoke as I approached
now that he was alone
leaning up against the fridge

For a moment he just looked at me
and I felt that I must be losing
all my marbles and that
it wasn’t him at all
but then

flashing that signature Hollywood smile

“What took you so long?” He said.

Crazy Mexican Cocaine Cop Killer

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Fresh from leaving the scene
with bodies all over the floor
staring up at the ceiling fans
with glass eyes.

They looked exactly how Hector said
when he showed me my first:
“See, there’s nothing inside of them anymore.
You’ve got nothing to fear from a dead man
except his kid.”

Soon after the slaughter
I passed this cop on the highway
and he wasn’t looking at me right
something about the big, broad sneer
painted all across his fat, dirty face
really pissed me off

so I spun a 180
hard
half across the road
half across the gravel
fish-tail swinging wide
like her hips in those jean shorts.

Lord have mercy,
what a fucking whore
she was in the end
and it only made me want her more
than life itself.

I came up hard on his cop’s tail,
while throwing my nose into the rest of the bag.

Fuck, that’s primo Mexican!
Everything else they have is shit but
their coke and tacos? Holy fuck!

“Pull over, Pig!” I shouted
until he slowed down on the shoulder
as I picked up the revolver
lying across the
passenger seat.

“Hey Piggy, Pig Pig Pig…” I chanted,
“It’s your turn to pull over now.”

I fumbled the door but it opened anyway.

I got out of the car
raised my pistol
and bullets went flying
as I laughed.

It’s Hard to Look Back When All That You Know Is Fear

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It’s hard to look back
when you are running through a night forest
without a light when you are sure that there is
something coming after you but you are not sure
what it is.

As the branches whip mercilessly across your wounded face
as you scramble to find footing knowing that
if you were to stumble and fall just once
whatever was mere steps behind you
would embrace that opportunity
to completely tear you apart.

As your heart thumps hard against your chest
as your breath aches but still you recklessly plant
one foot before the next and struggle to keep pace

you run and you run and you continue to run when
you don’t even know where it is that you are going
but it doesn’t matter as long as you endure
as long as you keep going and stay ahead
of whatever it is
that is chasing you.

It’s hard to look back
when you don’t know what you’re looking at.

It’s hard to look back
when all that you know is fear.

Sleeping With Both Eyes Open (I Thought You Were Dead)

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One of my cats
sleeps with both eyes open so
often when I get home and see it
nestled on top of the couch
like a twizzler
paws up in the air
head twisted violently vertical
both glazed eyes staring out
at nothing unblinking
I will think that it’s dead
and will feel compelled
to look into the matter.

So I would go into the kitchen
to return with a spatula
and begin to prod it
waking it from relentless slumber
to meow and yawn
at the same time
in response
which makes it look and sound
a lot like a scream
and I will then regret
tormenting the poor thing
with a spatula
if it has come down to it
screaming at me
like so.

Next time
I’ll try something more subtle
like the oven mitts
cause that won’t
totally scare the crap out of it.
Not one bit.

The cat is getting on in years
and one day it will pass on
all things do
especially things that are furry
and cute.
They pay for it. They do.
Because nothing screams death
like a teddy bear
and when my cat finally does
cash out its chips
I will most likely have some veterinarian
over for tea
and while on my couch
she will turn her head
to stare directly into its
frozen stare of harrowing death.

“Is your cat dead?” She will ask, alarmed.
“Nah, it’s all good.” I will mutter
or just blatantly ignore her and
continue watching Duck Dynasty.

In being of the profession that
tends to such things she will naturally
check for a pulse and there will be none
as in fact the poor thing will have
by this time
gone into rigor mortis days ago
and will even have
flies already settling
upon the cadaver and I will look like
the biggest asshole in the world
or even quite possibly bigger
as I will be out
one possible love interest
and certainly down
one cat.

You just watch.

Looking For a New Ride to Break

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Sometimes you lose control
of the car
so suddenly that it
flies spectacularly out
into the night
headlights staring up at God
bumper smiling at the
black nothingness
that has enveloped the world
(so quickly
does the sun die
in these times)
while inside
arms flailing
teeth grinding down
everything slows down for that
one final elongated second
as your mind
shows you old reruns of
bad sitcoms
instead of anything that was
monumental or important
and you abhor the fact that the
very last thing you’re going to see
before you die
is Bill Cosby’s face
as the car twirls as would a baton
in the hands of an angry cheerleader.

This is it, Man (you say to yourself).
Get ready.
I’m ready.

I’m so not ready.

The impact arrives as suddenly
as Christmas.
The car tumbles rolls and
pirouettes
like a rogue ballerina
until it turns over
one more time
-twitches, whines and finally
dies.

You open one eye.
It is still functioning so you
gamble to open the other.

You look down at yourself:
arms still there.
Legs, check.

Your manhood
will probably still function
after this and there is
nothing clamping you down or
sticking through you.

You are not part of the car.

Seeing that you’re not
completely wrecked
like the metallic shell that
surrounds you
you crawl out of where the
windshield once was and survey
the trail of glass and metal that
you have just donated to the highway.

That was close.
Too close.
Way too close.

When you going to learn?
Man,
when you going to learn?

Well, your cheque has not been cashed
this time.
It’s good to be alive
and stupid because God
must want you to live for the
sheer entertainment value.
He’s probably up there sitting
with his hand in the popcorn
delightfully confounded by
what a raving Jackass you truly are.

You could say that you’re not
going to do this again.

You could say it but instead
you wipe your jacket down
smile at the night
and head towards the conglomeration
of pinhead lights that signal
a nearby town

looking for a new ride to break.

What About You, Sweetheart?

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I ran with her from the barn
covered in hay and smiles
through the fields whipped by corn
chasing the sunlight in her hair
all through my childhood.

I was a lucky boy –she was such a beautiful girl.

She used to hide me in the hammock
spinning me around (laughing) to
cocoon me inside so that my parents
wouldn’t be able to find me and
take me away.

Sixteen years old she was struck by a car
and I had never seen her again.
I know what death is
but I don’t really know what death is.
I know what it’s like to feel your
heart breaking until it almost
stops.

God was broken
shattered like glass on concrete or
sunlight through trees or a
face in a closed casket.

I still have a drawing of her on my wall
encased in cracked glass never changed.

Somethings we cannot discard or choose
not to remember.
Somethings remember us, always
is us forever.

Sometimes I can still see her
in a wisp of blond hair
turning away down a corner
-a fleeting figure that I was
too late to catch full sight of.

Sometimes I can hear her in
other people’s laughter and feel her
in the wind rushing across the field
swaying the corn.

She used to hide me in the hammock
spinning me around (laughing) to
cocoon me inside so that my parents
wouldn’t be able to find me and
take me away.

It had never occurred to me to ask,
“What about you, Sweetheart?

What about you?”

They’ll Squeeze it Out of You Like A Machine

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They’ll squeeze it out of you
like a machine
every last drop
whether you run a press
sit at a desk
or stand in a boardroom
until one day you realize
how much time you have spent
breaking your back
busting your bones
shitting out your soul
for dollars and cents
and it all suddenly
seems so absurd
that if you don’t
break into laughter
then you just break
and they’ll immediately
replace you
and start squeezing it
out of the next one
like a machine.