After His Woman is Killed

 

After His Woman is Killed, Conan the Barbarian
Goes On To Become a King by His Own Hand
With Her Spirit Guiding Him

 

Beautiful lipids

The madness of negatives

Last night the tall dead

Walked the village like giants

While I shot up in a dream

Shall I make sense or shall

I tell the truth—choose either

I cannot do both.

Kind eyes, an unmade bed,

I know you are reading this

As I go. I go, not quite as doctrinaire

As an atheist, I will bend

Someday like a reed over the broken

Mosaic of a suburb, my home you,

Your home, me, and those who

Understand will also die.

“You are the most alive thing in the world”

You too, in my world and in the other one.

Amen.

 

[in New American Writing (2005) and in Sunny Wednesday, Wave Books, 2009]