Ash.
for those affected by our Southern California wildfires.
On Wednesday we all wear
ash from palm fronds
and good clothes with
our heads down full of
wishes. I thought:
that some day some big
wind will come and blow us
away to some place good and
painless like mylar balloons
our tails tangled up together
dancing against
that big blue
no clouds ever
sky. We will eat
cake together.
Overgrown.
We did not know how
to stop it. Once it got growing
it kept right on growing, vines
cracking like Indiana Jones whips
overtaking our duplex where we
lived in at least modest comfort and slithering
under chairs, our rugs
pulling the dogs when we were not
looking, especially on the eating-holidays
like Christmas Eve when we lost Max and
Thanksgiving when we lost Mister
Belvedere. By New Years time we were some kind of
sideshow on account that the neighborhood gentry assumed
we were some kind of Mister Brainwash installation or else
an agressive conservation movement. They gathered up on our
front lawn like carollers to behold the great
big green thing
coming up and out
from our windows and our doors and beneath our foundations,
with the most beautiful silken leaves running
with crimson streaks, big and
wide and proud like red blisters
badges for courage or war
paint for some small victory finally
struck.
El Golpe Avisa 