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”

 

 

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Haunts

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Abdication

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2019, Stephanie Foster)