What I Believe
       

Last night my mouth filled with blood
and I had been falling forever
in the darkness. Down the street
an old skating rink burned
up. There was lightning and fire
and a bored crowd
and a school bus speeding into the distance.

Where: the chalk shadow
of near-by mountains
and in the wet air the metallic plunk
of banjos. Everything
is too fast, just now.

Birds drop from ratty nests
in a dream
that is unsettling years later:
a peacock coughing,
blue-green feathers lousy with plague.

Forgive me. I'm scared
of the news. That Australia is aflame
and may be dead before
up-jumped real estate magnates from Queens.

My legs hurt. A molar
on the left side of my mouth
sings like I'll care, soon enough.
That I'll heal. Love,
do you have change for a jukebox
that exists inside
the sick tide of fever
and is filled entirely with old country songs?

Despair in its way
can be quaint
when there are no ashes in the wind.
When the water
isn't thick with lead
and this reference isn't punishingly obvious.

Tweet
Copyright © 2022 Paul Guest All rights reserved
from Copper Nickel
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission