They know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, they’ll go to it laughing

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I.
Who are these sight-starved and smiling madman enthralled by Death?
Blind captains forever mistaking the fires of Hell for the light of the Sun.

II.
I wonder if the First Nations remained optimistic about their future as promises evaporated, leaving behind this salted land; the pale white crust over brown soil.
We recapitulate because it is impossible to see the actions of invisible hands.

III.
Death is the son of Night and Darkness, helicopter parents. To this day, Death never sleeps alone.
Foul captains always forget that their only reward is a participation trophy.

They know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, they’ll go to it laughing

Huron Cemetery Poems VI

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May 7th, 2018

The Van Fossens (Caroline M., Ruth, Charles H.)

On my way to the cemetery,
I saw three men help lift
an inebriated woman to her feet.
A block later, I heard the ambulance cry.

On my way to the cemetery,
I passed an Oculista’s office,
which I mistook for an Occultista.
I considered stopping in for a look-see.

No bones about it:
The sensual world is incomplete.
That’s why the hidden world’s call
is irresistable to so very many.

Two people hug behind the library.
I jump to my feet because I sat on an anthill.
How do I explain to my boss
all the ants that I’m bringing back with me?

https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/1062025/memorial-search?firstName=&lastName=Van+fossen

Huron Cemetery Poems VI

Choose Well

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I am walking
on the sidewalk
in a blue button-up,
too-tight loafers on my feet,
behind a young girl
with cat ears on her head and
an orange balloon
tied to her overstuffed purse.

She bounces and
she waves and
she sings to the cars
driving up and
down Minnesota Avenue.

I stay ten steps behind
simply waiting,
watching,
for that balloon
to lift her up and
away.

Instead, she tries
to duck into a Subway,
but that balloon
catches on the door.

She chops at it with her hand,
then she looks me in the eye,
asks me what the fuck I’m staring at.

“I thought you might float away.”

“Some day I might,” she says and
then she walks inside
to get herself a sandwich
made just the way she likes.

Choose Well

Huron Cemetery Poems (V)

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April 29, 2018

LITTLE NEROT
AGED 3 MONTHS

God, how I need the sun now.
I’m so weary of being indoors.
I’ve stopped wearing socks and shoes to the office.
I need to feel the worms, the shattered glass, the broken backs underneath my soft, bare feet.

I’ve disinvited myself to endless meetings, too.
Instead, I’ve taken up with sunshine,
         and the the vines that run up the trees,
                    and the tiny graves of infant humans,
and the old ways of telling time, of measuring progress,
of being a body.

I hear you scoff from an open window, “The old ways?! The old ways?!”
But you’re not thinking old enough.
You gotta get deeper.
You gotta remember the dead,
          remember the sun.
You gotta remember that hot light falling across your fat, tiny toes.
You gotta feel it, that hot light.
You gotta really feel it.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/16982009/little-nerot

Huron Cemetery Poems (V)

Huron Cemetery Poems (IV)

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April 27th, 2018

HARRIET BUTLER
1837 – 1870
AND INFANT DAUGHTER
AUG – SEPT. 1870

I wonder if she killed you

and I wonder if the others’ tears
fed the city that would soon
spring up around you.

You never saw
how their sadness
turned to brick and mortar
used to hold hopes for a new life,
used to hold off a slow death,
used to hold in the last breaths
of a jaywalker’s world.

Now, you rest between two trees.
In the summer, their leaves shade you from white heat.

Two birds fight in the distance.
          Oh, maybe they’re flirting.
It can be so hard to label natural inclinations.
It’s a problem to try to understand love at all
when most graves have such a common tale to tell.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/16887899/harriet-butler

Huron Cemetery Poems (IV)

Huron Cemetery Poems (III)

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April 23, 2018

UNKNOWN(S)

White woman walks by in a Wu-Tang shirt
White feather waits above a grave unknown

An ant crawls up my pant leg, looking for life.
Tree bark is an ancient remedy for an aching back.
An alarm is sounding and a mangy squirrel
          rears up on hind legs
          in a curious challenge to some intuited superiority
          before scurrying up a favorite trunk to bark at me
          from a place of perceived safety.
More sirens sound
                    down
          on 7th and Minnesota.
The squirrel forgets that many men hurl rocks and words to
maintain a silent world.

An ambulance arrives at the library.
The sirens wind down.
The squirrel gives me the finger and lights a cigarette.
I can see Missouri from here.
And I can read between these tombstones’ lines.

Huron Cemetery Poems (III)

Huron Cemetery Poems (II)

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April 20th 2018

Richard Johnson
1846-1857

The bones are old but the boy is not.
The boy has dreams but the bones do not.

We should have a dandelion festival, you and I.
Dress in our finest yellows and greens,
boldly expose ourselves
to the chilly spring air,
serve as a reminder
to those that walk above us

that the dirt is old and the center is hot,
that all’s born from dreams and impossible thoughts.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/16981891/richard-johnson

Huron Cemetery Poems (II)