By Howie Good

 

A Descant for Yellow Police Tape

 

Someone comes in and says,

“I’m going to kill myself,”

you take their word for it.

But the process is slow,

a tree filled with clocks.

 

Think about it.

People drool when they sleep

but we know sleep is good for you.

Think real hard about it.

 

I knew a guy who was depressed

took LSD and stared

into the sun for half an hour.

Bet heroin cheers you up, too,

and meth, and whisky,

 

and shoes stuck in a fence,

and houses covered in dots or numbers,

and visitors from faraway cities,

clutching cameras.

 

Seed texts: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/04/03/298770933/growing-evidence-that-a-party-drug-can-help-severe-depression; http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/04/us/fires-in-detroit-destroy-an-artists-canvas-vacant-houses.html?ref=arts&_r=0

 

 

Anniversary of the Plague Year

 

1

Fallen planes with swastikas on their tails dot the countryside. It must be Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. You take one pill for your head and two more for your heart, but can still choke on a sip of water. The dying are all forced to share the same rectangular view. There’s something moving out there, something walking in the woods, a serial killer with a pleasant demeanor and no place to make a left turn. I roll up my sleeve to show you new tattoos of black parental mysteries, mother as pitchfork. They begin to breathe and glitter.

 

2

An introspective man in blue came in the other day looking for the 9th wonder. I didn’t get his name, only noticed his shaved head, never realizing that wind waves don’t move as fast as speeding cannon balls. Someone will probably write a thesis on it – what, in literary circles, we call intertexuality, snippets of code gleaming and then going away in the darkness. All I see now, though, is a flock of gaunt, exhausted angels below the window, the starvation they endured for the sake of luminosity and because of which they seem to stagger just before their plumage fades.

 

3

First came disasters of our own making, and then came the carcasses of junk cars silhouetted against lacerated skies. Everyone asked about the meaning of the words “spectacle” and “witness,” even though a video of burning water posted to YouTube on Thursday had been viewed over 50,000 times by Friday night. And more important still were the contagious mice that a decade ago today left in tears for a damp and verdant city.

 

About the author:

Howie Good’s latest book of poetry collection is ‘The Complete Absence of Twilight’ (2014) from MadHat Press. He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely, who does most of the real work.
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poetry