Memories

memories are bones we find

inside unmarked burial grounds
when digging for fresh water

memories are Frankensteins
fragments forced into sense
their last words your lips her scent

memories are misleading brochures
tales with no beginnings and no ends
sickly ghosts needing doctors or priests

memories are abandoned rusting rails
they’re circuses of snapshots and sounds
floundering zoos of beauties and beasts

memories stretch from depths of the brain
through blood and flesh and through bones
like a meandering poem looking for home

Dirty Eyes

I woke up covered all 
In fragments of a dream,
All sticky like the scent of skunks
That sprayed my storybook last night.
—Wash up!  the voices shrieked 
And pushed my head madly beneath
A pool of tears until I drowned 
Again inside another dream.

So tell me whose tears were that soaked 
The leaves I'd flipped through all last night 
With every flutter of lashes so moist.
So speak but make it soft and clean
And hold my hands and smile and joke
And only then describe my nightly scene 
The screens projected on my twitching lids 
The ghastly films my dirty eyes have seen....