Tag: death
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PRETTY LETHAL FINDS ITS EDGE IN BLOOD, BALLET, AND THE COST OF GRACE
Pretty Lethal delivers a fierce blend of ballet and bloodshed, carried by a cast of women who attack every scene with conviction. The film falters when it explains too much, but its action sequences and emotional core keep it compelling.
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Goodbye June: A Winter Song of Love, Loss, and Returning Home
Kate Winslet’s Goodbye June offers a luminous, bittersweet portrait of a family gathering around a mother’s final Christmas. With heartfelt performances from Toni Collette, Andrea Riseborough, Johnny Flynn, Timothy Spall, and Helen Mirren, the film becomes a moving study of love, memory, and the bonds that endure.
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Shelby Oaks: The Ritual Beneath the Oaks
Shelby Oaks, Sarah Durn, Crud Stuckmann, horror movie review, occult horror, demonic ritual, hellhounds, Tarion demon, Riley Brennan, Mia Brennan, Robin Bartlett, Shelby Oaks ending explained, Shelby Oaks plot summary, Shelby Oaks cast, Shelby Oaks film analysis
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Classic Review: Something Wicked this Way Comes— The Autumn People Are Real
A lyrical, mixed-to-positive retrospective of Jack Clayton’s 1983 adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, exploring its surreal horror, troubled production, and enduring emotional resonance.
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Sunset Visit
“Sunset Visit” emerged during a twilight walk through a cemetery near my childhood home. I was struck not by grief, but by the contrast between the quiet of the dead and the noisy solitude each visitor carried—thoughts, regrets, memories. The poem began as a study in light and stone, but deepened into a meditation on…
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Final Call
Final Call The screen flickered in the hush of enveloping dark, Michael Douglas pacing, his fate unraveling— *Fatal Attraction,* a movie about consequence, its shadows pressing forward. But beneath the flickering flames, something was wrong, settling into my gut like a held breath, bending the air—quiet rupture, breath held too long. Five minutes home, five…
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The Last Ride
The Last RideThe highway hums beneath us, a silver ribbon unspooling, stretching time, five hours folding into salt and horizon. She sits beside me in the old Chrysler— the Town & Country, once dignified, now a relic of polish fading into nostalgia. The wood paneling still whispers of its golden years, though the lacquer has…
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Reasons
Things are going as planned. My mother died. My father died. I am aliveand bound to fateI recite the mantra to myself: “A father is fate,” drawing the Harrow along my fetid soul, turning over what was planted in me, digging up the weight of his will. But a counterchant arises, the one I will…
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The End of the Pier
I walked to the end of the pier and could not throw your ashes into the sea.It was easy with my father— to see his blackness float in the air and settle on the wrack line, neither the earth nor sea’s possession.But you, dear friend, my lost sister not of the soul but of pain,…
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They Live/They Die
There is a song that will never benot one of a crooning summer breezebut of smothered dreams in dirty streets—Those buried in shrouds of leavesplucked from maple trees,couched in green moss orin lovely silks on soft downy beds will never know thosewho died on a freezing night, a bottle by their side ora needle in…
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Light
When I was a child light shone angels through my fingerscrowning my parents’ faces,blessing the simple tasks of theirs: table setting, pouring water—how it lit the world in my upturned smileand flowed through as I grewand how it followed me homeand stayed, even in the dark.Light was the water, earth,reflecting off every animal, every street,…
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On My Father’s House
On my father’s housethree slaves and six horsesdied when the old stable blazeda century and a half ago, and three union and two confederate soldiersslayed each otherin a forgotten skirmisha few years later.Their skeletons were foundtwo years after the war under an uprooted white pine.The county let the field return to forest,except for the old…
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Not Touched but Moved
Death has left its imprint on me so much I don’t know who is touching me inside anymore.Certainly it’s another presence,a voice apart from God.Or is God the sum total of all my known deaths?My soul is an oarless canoe afloat a lake of tearsseeking both initiation and response to steer it. Every death is…
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Death Milad
As I get older I don’t dread death coming closer. It is closer. It will come as a newborn:seeding so long in me, that I would chide it for taking its time. I will not scream when it head comes out my body.I won’t even be amused by such a Hollywood trick.And when its held…
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My Thalassophobia
I play with the sand, crush it to a globe ofsun dried golden particles,until the thing in me that is the ocean calls to release it to the tideso full of the incessant sorrow upon sorrow of other’s tearsforced daily to kiss the shore-its roar constantly reminding me-the ocean hates the land-the ocean does not…
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Paying the Killers
My wife hears the weed man outside spraying the lawn.The next day it’s the pest control guy doing the foundation.He doesn’t come into the house to spray each room anymore. Just doing the outside is enough to keep the bugs away,says the pamphlet he leaves at the top of the steps.My wife comes from the…
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Marriage
After his deep illness was over he laid his body on hers—the length of his body on hers—all the sleepings, awakenings,fights, teacup and coffee mornings,their talks about everything and nothing,the plummets, the joyous-awkward silences—and with a tear, she beared his weight— until it was gone.
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The Things Is…
(after Ellen Bass)The trick is to love life,even when you have no stomach for it-even when your life crumbles to burnt paperin your hands- your throat choking in its ashes,embers turned tearing diamonds,weighing you down in grief’s obesity. “How can a body withstand this?”you will ask, cradling your facein your palms- your ordinary facenow, no…
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American Sonnet for My Roomba Soul.
I am old and have seen so many dawns that their beauty has no wonder.You see, my God doesn’t need to be perfect- just right more times than not, and not repeat his/hers/its creations so much, for me to be totally happy.The only thing that still amazes me is that I can navigate the dark…
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Rollercoaster
When I was young I use to workout my death every time I rode a rollercoaster.I would give myself a glittery gold stickerfor not giving into the fear of the ascent,another if I did not pukeon the first big drop,three if I didn’t fall out raising my hands on turns.I would walk off feeling dizzywith…
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An Old Cold Wives’ Tale
His wife turned cold. He touched her,hoping to die, at the least, maybe sleep. He did not die and he still could not sleep.Her coldness did not dry him out inside. He looked outside and noticed the street littered with other cold wives, demon hands holding them down in a web of rootssprouting from the…
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A Grieving Song for Unsung Lullabyes
Small steps, my child,in this wilding place.Sharp life everywhere,the spaces too. Steps, small steps, child, tiny prayers, hopes blowninto the trees, the faraway birds,taking safety in the chantof this golden butterfly’s rise,who drank from the splash of the summer rainin the chase of light atop the trees.Small steps, child, forward, sure and true.
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The Maiden and Her Beauty
Beauty sunned itself on the stone walla slice of the light come early, then gone.But the maiden knew Beauty would stay near, hidden in the summer grasses.In the morning she went to the stone and found Beauty uncoiled, slumbering.The maiden took Beauty into her own hands.and opened the silken feed sack, she’d brought.Beauty poured itself…
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Unfinished Poem
(after Mark Strand)In the drifting of the moon over the waters she saw a past fear jumping to the future : Rain was falling on her husband’s grave, while this poet was moving into her house, in the rain.In her old room the poet was writing a poem abouta woman who strolled under trees and…
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Well of Souls
(after William Erickson)The well sings of all the fallen children.The song is sad and long for there are many,but it’s also beautiful, for the children sing to the din of stars above.It’s the song of the echo of love, a song that grows, low and soft and secretbuilding a staircase to the heavensthat rises above…
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Amongst the Monuments
One day I will commit the greatest heresy and spread my father’s ashes over my mother’s grave.I will sit, with them and all these other named and nameless cloud covered bodies stretching to the horizon—a final gesture, maybe, but surely a goodbyeto how they came to this place, and how I must leave when the…
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Remembering First Snow
The snow in its gloaming has been heaping field and highway with deep, white silence.The pine, fir, hemlock are draped in ermine,the poorest twigs ridged in deepest pearl.From the shed’s roof a rooster crows and stiff rails now down, flutter to the ground.The silent father listens to the noiseless workof beating snow birds whirling by.…
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Two Haikus On the Death of Youth
Dead leaves underneath:The grief of a now shorn thing That knew sky and stars.The dew has dried.The red blossom shadow’s grows—Exhales, fades away.
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Oblivion
Sprinkle my ashes in an unknown spot, neglected by everyone but you. Let those who forget me, forget me. My death won’t revive their utter lack of life, relieve their petty jealousies, hates. The tribute of an unknown walker spreading my dust is honor enough, living in your secret oblivion, my joy.
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Song of the Air
The dying fisherman stares at the sea gray as his hair, cap and clothes-knowing the day he freed the tangledmermaid from the kelp, and how she spoke of the brine and slid back into the waves. On this last day of his nothing, she appears- and he hides behind the mast so she would not…
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The Oven Bird
The song of this ugly bird fills the kitchen and escapes through the window, this thing that could only gobble in life, teaching the tree one to sing. Note: There are two birds being referred to: the first- the turkey in the oventhe second- an actual bird species, the ovenbird.
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Behind the photo of the boy on the rubble
The boy sits atop of the rubble of his homeHis father lies silent twelve feet belowHis infancy has fallen from that summitThe darkness chokes his gentle neckNeedles of despair push into himTheir sharpness kills his heartInside he feels all his organs shrivel His tears fertilize the moundFrom them, a black flower seedsIts delicate roots claw…
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After October 7th
He had collected remains for most of his lifebut now can’t stand the smell of grilled meatHis son marks time from that fateful date,everything before that, lost in time’s horror.His son-in-law now gags at the smell of rotten food.They work to bring the families of the dead closure,even though there is no real closure for…
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Rattlesnake
I tasted rattlesnake once at the annual Wild Hog BBQ held at the old Ocohopee fair grounds.It came in inch thick fork stabbed slabs on a Hefty styrofoam plate.It did not taste like chicken.The hog, however, was sweet,tangy, full of saucy squealing death,and nothing like chicken at all.Back home, my grounded sister,punched me hard in…
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A Secret Poem
He buried her kiss.For thirteen months it stayed hidden.She did not knowit was lying there.He did not tell her.When it was time,after she fell asleep, he dug the kiss upand pressed it into a little box he especially madefull of cotton.He walked to the garden,dug a two kiss deep grave under her favorite tree and…
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Heavier than Age
Morning heavier than ageleaves the birds weighted to the limbs, unable to break out in riotous morning song.In the distance— a church bell,people in black creeping around-“Heaven. Heaven,” in their earsfor the poor soul laying beneath.They wish to hear only the sea.The old sea. The new sea. Any sea— to catch their tears, drown their…
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A Small Post Christmas Miracle
He watched his grandma create this wonderful thing stitch by stitch, just for him, in her remaining free time.He was mesmerized by the looping and pulling, the unraveling skeins meldinginto this beautiful blanket of many colors.By November it had started showing flashes of his favorite hues: blue, green, yellow— black stitching separating into squares.He imagined…
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Prayers and Miracles for a Daughter Passed On
When his daughter died he made a church of his pain, the only truth he believed— the truth of his grief.In that shrine, he could pray, must pray:“Lord, suffer me to know these wounds of which I am. Savor, ease this lonely creature.”“Everything must die in the beauty of your grace.For in that loss I…
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After the Cure
I came back and I could see through the pane it had fallen, this leaning tree that grew pridefully close to the house,roots torn from earth in the winds.When all others died, it had survived the heat and blight, all the cold night winds, but not my separation, cure, return. I cried for its sorrow…
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The Blind Man’s Spot
My hands touch the flagstones of your tomb.In this world of persistent shadowsmy feet go numb walking to this spot.I hear the wind scuff the white granite all aroundossifying thedirt, blood, stonebelow into my nostrilsand lungs. I sit on the benchnear youalmost seeingthe specterof birdsstopping their prolong flightinto the comingstillness of night trees,never really knowing…
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Chalk
They traced their chalk hand first; yellow, pink, gold flowers second; memorized the white ridges of that good dog paw mold from the vet third; all the accretions, good and bad of the pastel outlines of life’s hopscotch fourth; copied dutifully the chalkboard forms fifth; leaving only the final one drawn by others, the one…
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Trying to Follow My Mother
This morning the ghost of my mother haunted me. There was just peace, calm, a blue-green shadowy crystal shimmering steady above my sleeping chair. She came at a time when only I can see and know her- before the last dream and dawn, before the others awakening, she pulsated lovely and in proper motion through…
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Practice
The day’s practice arrives:awakening knowing one more day stretching arms and toes until the deadness fades, breathing in life until you are out of breath,cutting off the words in a hopeless conversation,playing the scales over and over,until each day ends and sleep comes againand the waking dawn orders us to practice again.
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The Death Wife’s Tale
After nine months,three hours of laborand a mile of wanderingTahlequah gave birth in the middle of a salted world.For half an hour,Tahlequah could look into her child’s eyes.For thirty minutes the child, until it became silent, was a sacrament to love.In the inexplicable beauty of her death Tahlequahdecided to carry her.She remembered how there was…
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From the Sky
They built their tunnels deep into the sky.“No one, will find us here,” they thought.They watched their children playing soccer.They saw their grandmothers making bread.They knew the teen boy, so like themselves,under the olive tree, eating watermelon, writing a love letter on his phone. His beloved, not far from the checkpoint where soldiers were cocking…
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Dogwoods
The rusted tips of the dogwood petals, fall after fall, indented to the shape of crosses, leaving bloody crucifixes after bloody crucifixes.The collected light, felt wounded,drenched in a suffering beauty, the kind the soul draws as perfectly straight.The red berries, past ripe are now wine. They stand naked in the air in lovely shame,past innuendo,…
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A Discovered Graveyard
(After Robert Frost’s In a Disused Graveyard)The dead come along the living unexpectedly,their grassy treads kicking upon their stonesonce upright now downturned in the weeds.They just wish to rest in peace, away from these stumbling fools that wound themselveson weathered marble letters written large: “THE ONES WHO LIVING COME TODAYTO READ THE STONES AND GO…
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Truths
Three things that are silent and true:the twilight hour,the plummeting snow,death beneath every window.
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Remember the Grass
Delight in the cool grass,its elusive, delicate, shy,brush on your face,tingling arms, bare soles- for one day you will be too far beneath even its touch.
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Bringing Hope Home
They brought Hope home in crisp sunshine on a cloudless day to a backyard overlooking a forest.Just a mother and daughter, a shovel,a smallness wrapped in a ziplock bag, born four or five days before.The lack of rain had hardened the earthand the digging was unyielding work, an hour of frustration before the ground yielded.Finally,…
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the spaces she left behind
they turned brown before you arrived by the time you came on them swiped the dust off turned the pages they were crumbling you never looked at the rest surrendering them to silence you could lie down again now there was nothing between you now the rain was beginning outside or was it just the …
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Pushing the Needle
My father wasn’t the kind of man to let his ashes just blow in the wind. He spent his life trying to push him-self through needles.At his celebration of life, I watchedas his ash drifted down through the smallest cracks.The poor manwould have been pleased.Then, the sea tasted his embersand scattered himamongst the waves breaking…
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Beautiful Flashes of Life
Grandma Clara knew this day would come,so she put on her favorite blue & white dress.She had been waiting for this, for a long time.Clara switched the television channel to the one her grandkids watched all the time.She pulled up her wheelchair, stowed it neatly in the corner. Clara didn’t want her son/grandkids, stumbling over…
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Hot Wax on a Wool Dress
After three days of black rags over mirrors,three days of the open coffin in the parlor,Nana’s eyes closed, unable to see beyond-Lena, needed to run around the backyard,holding the hand of the first living thing that would follow her around, round, round.She was wearing the last wool dress Nana knitted for her (a green, white…
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Mother Are You Proud of Me?
They tore your body apart.You died among walls of infusion boxes.On the television, the Pope riding by in his Pope mobile.Are you proud of mewhen I cry?Are you proud of mewhen I don’t?Peeking through the slats of the living room blinds,I discovered your body slumped in the reclining chair.Will I ever know the truth of…
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An Old Garden
(After Richard Aldington’s Aux Vieux Jardin)Today I found an unknown garden in the woods.I do not know who carved this still pool fringedwith reeds amidst a forest browning for winter.Who decided to protect it from the tearing air,tended it to suckle water from dark clouds.All I know, it blooms with great delight, apartfrom the diverse…
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Rainy Day
Only the rain moves,nailing the houses into their own coffins. In childhood daysthe rain sailed down alleys.merrily sweeping motley papers, leaves,once, a tiny pink shoe—everything, to the sea, a rollicking circus calliope. Now the rain, the iron rain,lets the sky place itstombstones onevery single roof.
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Juanito’s Dream
Juanito grew up with a velveteen rabbitin his hand and a gun by his side.On his sixth birthday his junkyard owning Dadgave him a clutch of rainbow balloons.He climbed the rusted skeleton of a Cadillac, held the beautiful Mylar to the sky and prayed to be taken to heaven.The answer was the sour tasting rain.On…
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Under the Tree of Knowledge
Let me lie here and knowwhy over this ground this apple tree makes a long shadowand a light sound.For a moment death will wait,but this tree will not,nor will it mourn for me when there is sweet birdsong all around.My sapling moment has passed, my winter comes and I have climbed and shaken every boughand…
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Talking Away
I use to think about grief,building loss on loss, sorrow on sorrow,into a silent groan in my bowelsof ever churning lamentsmourning for the comfort of dead faces.All the sorrow and lost infused my words. It leaked out to the white spaces betweenunwanted vowels and syllables : to the house gone, parts removed,friends lost, the broken…
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Rye Lane: Getting Past All the Ex-Misses
Plot via IMDB: Two youngsters reeling from bad breakups who connect over an eventful day in South-London. Rye Lane, streaming now on Hulu, is a romantic comedy that succeeds by breaking all the rules of the genre and dating. Don’t spend the date talking about your exes is the big one, especially if you want…
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Dust
I find it easier to collect dust than move it around from feathery place to place.Dust is history. It holds the flavors of myself.Dust contains my words.It sits on my mantle adding more specks every year,life upon life on death.I see God in its ashes—He is dust and Dust is everythingIt swirls in endless ribbons…
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Sunflowers Flash Bye
In my car, I speed by a field of sunflowers following the light as the sun follows them, their life with me over in the flash of an eye, leaving only remembered halos in the shadows of buzzing bees whose journey, like mine, will be over by day’s end.
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Masks Strolling Venice’s Square
A rogue with a stitched mouth steals bye,swiping a pearl from the porcelain womangazing adoringly at the moon-face lothario. The false Pope blesses the crying baptized child that Godfather death holds in his hands.The masks float along the Venice squaresinging dead languages, hiding their selvesin the faces of gods and goddesses sighing.
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Walking Her Bicycle Back Home, Alone
Oh, child of mine, I’ve come back toreclaim your most precious thing from that blue ravine off the stone road.I lack the steadiness and pulse of movementto ride it home.So, I walk it back totally alone now,remembering those first unsteady lessonsuntil you found the perfect balance to peddle this silver dreambeyond my steady support.I will…
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The Squirrel Holds Tight the Acorn
When I looked again, the squirrel with the acorn was gone, perhaps vanishing behind the trees.Minutes later, I noticed her gray shadow.She moved to me then ran the other way.In her fright, she did not notice the car, and the car did not notice her. For the driver, the squish could of have been another…
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Cup of Light
I watch the light filter through the sky, touch the grass. It moves thru the window forming a yellow light in the glass on the table. Barely glimpsed, it moves again, almost touching the room where you are dying.
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Raise the Red Lantern, Take Down the Blue Lantern
The wooden shutters must be flung opento scatter the doves on the ledge to the sky.Hang up that red lantern long reserved for all.Put it in the brightest spot to release the most joy.Take down that old blue lantern put up on the eaveswhen Mǔqīn (Mother) flower began to wilt in winter. for today, she…
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Walking the Dead Beach
1The beach evaporates into the clouds and on sandsbeyond hourglasses, I walk—under a dry and empty sky,a blue that doesn’t exist, a white that has died inside.The dark and light hereare not things. The beach is a negative of souls. I try to imagine a life before the dry,perhaps a lover,someone besides me,to sleep in…
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The Crying Old Woman on the Bank
An old woman in a Mantilla carries hernew sorrows. She wanders lost—knowing not enough Englishto understand and answer questionsShe needs to sell the familia silver to recover her drowned hijo from the river,but she is sunset to everyone she pleas to.
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To Know Guernica Is to Fall
He saw Guernica in front of him and knew what falling was in all its gray grace and white horror. “Jesus, how they huddle together like close trees in a savage wind,” he thought, noticing his phlegm falling into the acid of his stomach. By the time he left the museum dusk…
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The Boat Awaits
Silent boats await to take us all to distant shores.
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Death and the Maiden
She gathered lilies to her— Held them to the Lord of Sky until she fell away and he granted her eternal night.
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Magnolias
The Japanese Magnolias lean into the cicadas chirr,into the every shadows of the day,before returning back to the very open airthey keep to themselves before they die.
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New Year’s Eve Comes and Goes
A friend I’ve know for but a year came a knock, knock, knocking at my door.He was cold and thin, and even though he wanted in, I did not open the door.He was once such a grand delight but now he was so so such a bore. Knock, knock, knock, his knuckles rappedagain, again. I…
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Mask
The soul’s happinessis uncovered when the beautiful white death maskslips off the face.
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The Last Tree
The last tree sheds its leavesin the barren dry knowing the breezewill breathe its revival.
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Sheltered, I Am Now
No terror seedsin my soul. The gentledust of my mother remainsall around me. Her old comfortssnuggle away any regretsuntil our heavens meet. Not soon,but soon enough I will remain with you.Why will I decay in the crypt when only smoke can rise to joy?That cloudy mass that rises from burning,burns tears beyond the wear of…
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The Singing Honeyeater
The Singing Honeyeater fell following the shadow of my hand on the wall.Right wing coveringits breast, it fellin full song.In a splash of last rain,the shadow of my handit knew was not sky, it fell.And,in the speckled evaporation of a mute sky, its last notes fell forever inside me.
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Nourishment
The buried placenta knows not the suffering of the womb,only that it once nourished.
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Walking Along the Seashore Without My Mother
The old negative of her with her hair pinned backI hold up to the horizon and see it fade into the waves.It was the one taken through the filtered window of her black car,her face half in night and half in day.Behind, I hear the echo of the sand cave.In front, the roar of swirl…
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The Road to the Sea
When I was a young boy my mother drove us in a white Plymouth to a road that ended even with the sea. The last tenth mile was paved seashells mortared with beach stones, the low shoulders no higher than my ankles- the carapaces of turtles, crabs, lobsters boiled and eaten over a century. She…
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Getting It Right
I try on my death suit regularly, and even after my cancer surgery, it’s still too long in the arms and legs..This year I did manage to find a comfy pair of shoes in a size 9 1/2that don’t make my toes numb.in a few years I will come into a nice inheritance and will…
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The Box That Holds My silence
At bedtimeI sit in my chairand turn offmy long lived hearing aids,putting them in the pine box with the gold leaf claspand a brown phoenixcharred into the lidThe traffic outside dies,the rasping of my dog is silent,my wife’s snoring is muteand the world is so so quiet now. In the morning only the light streaming…
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The Lesson of Our Puddles
Oceans are formed from the dropping of our tears.and in it we must all drown,knowing only the cold and the slow driftingaway of our flesh.We watch our fathers live extraordinary livesbut die ordinary deaths.It sinks our hearts downin the gush of a thousandmemories past and memories to be named,into expectations of what was andwas suppose…
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Side Effects
In my dreams I ride bicycles. In life, I once knew how to ride them.Now I am old and side effects have my feet missing the pedals and falling down.
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Sixty Degrees and Clear
Sixty degrees and clear.She dies -morning hospice shiftwhile I’m getting ready to visit her.Waxen in her white bed,arms bruised and quiet now,mouth wide in a gaspas if in scream, as if sayingah, no! Both eyes closed,turned down for my visit,denied all further light,sky or even ceiling.I touch her hand. It iscold. It’s only beentwo hours.…
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Leaving Tranquility
Not far from the cove, the stones worn smooth from the tides weeping, the salted breeze, removedfrom all tranquility, is the grand windowed house. The ashes will be spread on the beloved soil,the October browning still green to cover this assembly of forgetfulness. The house awaits the noises of the feast,the jeer, the final clearing…
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The Cursing Stones
Ariana, adopted the old Greek ways, when Nikos died diving for sponges. She encased her curses into two lead stones: smuggling one into his coffin, dropping the other into Naxos deepest well. She made sure Nikos soul would carry her curse to the underworld before it ascended to heaven, or activated fully on the river…
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Washing the Corpses
–After Rainier Maria Rilke The washers have lived with death as they have with the lamp, the flame and the dark, the nameless rinsing of limbs, the even more unnameable nameless. without histories relative to them. Their sponges dipped the water then the silent throat, trickled rivulets on their faces, waiting for it…
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The Art of Dying
The Pandemic has closed the theaters and cinemas. On stage a lone actor commits suicide in the loneliness. On screen the two lovers run to each other against the march of soldiers. The actor’s death is an extravagant fake, a nod to the art of dying a good stage death. The…
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Obituary of Her Last Memory
Many say the last thing the dying see is the flap of dove wings or Jesus caressing their hair. Her hallucinations were full of Him smiling at her, speaking words she could not understand. And when I draped the blanket over her cold feet, crowned with the blue bruise of all her past…
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The Wave
The hospital gown they gave me is the same one with clouds my mother and friend once wore, a hand me down filled with the aura of grief and hope, of time and death. My name and date of birth are the only thing the nurses ask as I am led to the mold…
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Diary of Your Last Breath
December 3, 2019 She was displayed before me with her eyes closed and mouth agape, leaving me to wonder whether she died in terror or awe. Was her last breath the honest gurgle I’ve been seeing for the last few days, that I took comfort in hearing restart every time I called her name…
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Seeing 2020
I want to greet the new year with 20/20 eyes, knowing that cure dances on the edge of hope’s grave and that in this biblical year of flood, cancer and death, that grief is just a short term companion. Tomorrow time will step me away leaving only memory and the long walk to the…
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Oncology Nurse
Every touch is a devotion, every soft phrase a prayer to life, to continue living. – A nightingale, a dove gowned in heavenly blue a ministering survival chant. – Thank you and double checks are abundant. – They minister consistent kindness for they live among the blasted. – There is no sniping, no rivalries, just…
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A Dying Poet’s Final Sonnet
Bury me not in a high tomb of gloom on days sacred to all your lonely heart nor scatter my ashes in the pale moon on June’s or September’s early-late start. Mix me in with all my good beastlies‘ dust, one third reserved for Elsi’s sweet embrace, two parts crushed into diamonds that not…
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The Nacre of Cancer
I have no taste for whiskey, although it seems over the years I have developed a proclivity for cancer, for building the nacre into pearl. It’s funny how one can live with death scooted to the borders, listening to it rap the door with sub-audible gusts that only your dog hears and barks at.…
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Catacombs Know No Smiles
Catacombs are full of bones snuggling in the disgrace of others. Hipbones piled on top of skulls, the absence of lower jaws denying the departed a smile, the eternal existential joke of insulting the living with the knowledge of their ultimate end. Femur, skull, femur skull is the monotonous pattern of the Paris catacombs.…
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Last Ride on the Arkansas
On her last ride on the Arkansas river, she watched the world turn crooked, all the hickory shading yellow, their leaf tears forming sunny arrows in the flow, nuts falling in the glide, bringing smoker memories of hams cooked under their roast, red maples tapped for their syrup, the unharvested loblolly pines dropping their branches…