My task

She quoted someone whose name I forget,
something about her tasks being akin
to the torture of…someone…Sisyphus!
Speaking of endless repetitions, clean
becoming soiled and then the soiled made clean
over and over and over again….
Staying in Germany then with the kids,
still in my 40s, she in her 30s,
one of us had a lot of growing up
to do and now I know it wasn’t she.

Black Waters

River run
Down the mount
Let diamonds pour
Cleanse the fetid pipes
Where black waters roar
Past the ponds
Where mallards glide
Forgotten mounds of rocks
That fade in the sun
Purge this human waste
Chase the swell of rats
The jellied fats
Of nameless fish
Feces and filth
roaches and tortured ants
Evil and pestilent guilt
River run
Into the night
Of my days
Erase
All this

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.