Gnashville - WHY?

Never in the night

When the knot grows tighter

than fingers can untie,

and all the last half-damned

rivers have gone dry

does the cock crow thrice

until someone is denied…

or the morning comes.

And you wonder, will you

get your shit together?

And what is that?

A leather sofa and a feather in an old fur hat?

A fake tat' lost in a

box of cracker jacks?

Practicing your plane wreck

face in the first-class lav'?

That’s what the ghost of someone’s dad might say.

And when they come calling

I won’t go calm.

There is no palm or divine mitt

with which to hold one’s pit,

or separate the human race

from its environment.

No scattered ashes loosely gather

asking where the fire went.

No.

We’re left with half-true psalms

in an indecipherable scrawl,

in some vague extinct language,

ancient ink dull, almost vanished

on some old brittle scroll.

That’s what the ghost of

someone’s dad might say.