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Watercolor Devil
by Erik JensenI. Marie
Her hatpins and snake skins lay scattered across the
candle-flicker lit room, I remember that. The walls, like her voice,
are hoarse, musty, yellow. Almost watercolor opaque.
Neighbor things now pool their tangibilities – the carpet and table.
A sporadic flash of deep cherry wood comes through from their collective selves.
Her words even manage – though they only crescendo, echo and
then flee to small corners, like mice caught in sudden light.
Surely, I must be dying. Maybe Mr. Death isn't
some dark, sunken-eyed phantom, just a weight collapsing on me,
the blur confusing our worlds.
Maybe when my eyes open again, when her words are even more fragile -
I'll be more there than here.
II. Flores Para Los Muertos
“The crisp twenty-dollar bill you stole from your grandmother's peppermint julip purse,
each transient May Fourteenth and the fading sins of each year,
that girl (Heather – not Holly – she didn't remember either),
garlic powder riddled onion ring crunch,
Carl's one home run and David's loose slap shot tooth,
Kerouac (in varying degrees of sobriety),
the damp, pearl gleam wedding dress against hurricane-rinsed eyeshadow,
Four years of questioned manliness waiting for double lines,
Jerry Garcia (or what was left of him when you found him),
mismatched suits pieces with three shades of the same faded black,
'Why are we working with 'Windows?'”
Tom (Saigon – stings right?),
'Damn kids and their damn music,'
the singular importance and beauty of well-cultivated roses,
the one son, the other crushed beer can”
he paused.
“All flores para los muertos now, sir.
Most will wilt on your granite finish.”
III. Katrina
Her rim was the most magnificent ominousness.
Operatic hyperbole, Carmen personified.
Yet, she rolled us – toppled us like cardboard fortresses,
ripped us open and exposed every skeleton bit, blood vessel,
phantom and watercolor devil faintly buried within.
It's wounds and ointments I'd rather not revisit – but brother,
you gone and done it. Your beer tinged rambling aside,
what would he have said if this scene was playing out in his time?
“My home was already destroyed once.”
I can only hold us together so long,
and ain't got the buttresses or nothin'.
So what you say? 05/10/2010 Posted on 05/11/2010
Copyright © 2024 Erik Jensen
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