Free
Verse
Going
Home on the #12 Bus
The sky beyond broken
buildings slips
between
the thighs of evening. A low-rent
Batman locks eyes with lover boy (or
lover girl) and feral cats eviscerate
field mice
in
his look.
The bus driver studies bible prophesies
and figures the end is coming soon. Last
summer, he cut two fingers off with his
table saw. For a while there, he thought
the end was coming
then.
Batman distends as bumps in the street
massage his cancerous prostate. Lover
girl (or boy) looks out
the window
where roses bloom in the snow.
a prayer
for forgiveness
I went fishing
out
on the gray
bay. the mountains across the way
were blue as cheap paint
and
clouds hung low, as usual
above the ragged pines. I
dropped a line
as instructed and soon caught
a rock fish (red snapper). the guide
told me that fish
was 40 or 50 years old
and would make a good meal. I was tough
and did not bat an eye
as I watched that fish die. now, years
later in all my watery dreams I see
that beautiful old fish, red and pink as
any rainbow,
thrashing on the plank
bottom of the aluminum boat. I see its
bulging eyes and the desperation
of a living thing beyond all hope of life.
I am now an old man
and soon it will be my
turn to
be a fish out of water, gasping
for a dying breath.
forgive me
for taking that fishy life.
I could have survived
on bread
and left that glorious fish undead
in the deep cold water
just a few miles southeast of
Ketchikan.
