Haunts (poem)
Haunts
Start at the threshold
alive to American anonymity the subject steps
reeling inches of play onto a leash
Wretched elder of small dogs with matted fur, combing of
will argue for the owner no more sympathy than neglect
Rage like Lear if he were less the white patriarch
Sodden and sneered at by fools even for creeping to the errand
asked today, tomorrow to recompense none of faults and failures
Another thinks of highways and side lanes in paradimensional towns
The old imposed on present days, to you sighs in color-enhanced decay
Beauty, there is beauty, false and wishful beauty, in
Decline
Fleeing twenty times in dreams with hands doing practiced things
Bound to, is anyone bound to others, or are we all free
Foot it down the street to the car, pack groceries
Changes of clothes, and speed, speed
If it’s dying around you, diplomas and wedding drag
Memories of framing Human Shape before Yawning Valley
Memories of laughing
Give unease, pleasedly they curl a finger
And bid you, “Sit here”
and can’t restore the theater cocoon
Puppets who dispensed advice or pounced
Cracked-headed, all more high-tech Ozes
And the short clip of the funnel cloud
Now be ruled by the curtain not the man
The slipping dogs of war have you at a 30% chance
Of LOLing, “So this happened”
Haunts
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Abdication
(2019, Stephanie Foster)