Chain

As I came in and quietly sat
Beside her Persian cat,
Chloe walked in, glared at me, remarked,
-Did you know the cat once barked?
-Even gobbled, clucked, and mooed?
“Few times,” I played along, not wanting to be rude.
-Good, you still remember how to lie.
Have you ever wanted to but felt ashamed to cry?
I did.  I swallowed hard and then whispered, “Okay,
Just what exactly you trying to say?”
-Kindly go back to your selfish life.
-Lowly men like you never deserved a wife.
Men like me? I wanted to object.
No, I wanted to demand respect.
Oh, how small and stupid I felt.
Please God, I thought, let me just melt.
-Quiet suddenly, no retorts like old times?
“Reminding me yet again,” I said, “of old crimes?
Seven years have passed,
This pain, trust me, will always last
Until I have fully paid
Victims I have betrayed.
Why do you think I’m still alone?
X’s all over my life. I feel in every bone
You and the kids and everyone else I’ve caused pain.
Zing me, fine, but don't think I'll ever be free of my own chain,”

You Said

You said
Wish you
Were dead

Your mouth had opened and the words fell out 
Your tongue the launchpad of guided missiles
Your lips the gates of your inner prison

Each one feeding the same shy blossom 
of suffering, reopening the same wound in me
with their alphabetical poison, sinking like ear drops.

It was much later, at five o'clock in the evening,
sitting on my fast rocker, pouring wine, enough
to wash the brain, immerse and suffocate it....

That I recalled you never said nothing to me
except with your eyes and left corner of your lips
that raised enough to let out a sigh full of dead words.

Short Poems #1-2

I live inside a box I've formed of sounds 
of letters—meaning-making music, bounds 
of human-living—written (voiced), to rhyme
and rhythm.

************************************

Existence: Side effect of death, decay.
So many never birthed; but birthed, all die.
Thus life is fall from death; but death is whole.
Death is the soul; and life, entombed remains. 

But What Does It Matter?

What does it matter?  Asking I, at first
on sunny days (my body shivers, aches).
Life's a dream, in death it's enveloped firm—
though over pocket myriad gashes felt.

This letter now I'm living—or am I
more the letter written, rewritten, signed?—
tell me to whom it may concern, and why?
Is life a curse?  Or from the lord, a boon?

If my life's the letter, sung it's my tune;
under glasses, moments noted are runes;
and moments not, are endless landscapes strewn
with blurry ink—a soft inert cocoon
(dark enough to dream of butterflies soon,
common dream of hopeless humans unhealed).

Who's the receiver, postal system, dank
tongue that licks with care the envelopes sealed,
unknown unknowns in heaps, and myths unpeeled.
 
Who am I, the poet, poem, rhythms
and rhymes that hoist the feelings, senses, thoughts?
If received, then tell me: What has mattered?