Pies

How many strategies have you
exhausted dancing in the lake without the water?

Up to your ears in mud, does it get you anywhere?

The last thing you will think about will not be decided until
it is time to think about last things, then it’s all over

But back to the lake: it is not just a symbol, it is a literal lake

The swans forecast that the year will bring some outdoor festivals
and lots of bread floating on the surface,
then dispersing and floating off in many directions (like a life)

like a light

Laziness precedes the tickets you will receive for unoriginality
You have really taken the cake this time when you think

About why cooling pies aren’t taken off of windows anymore—
Is it because people don’t bake pies? Are they lazy?

Or is it because pies are only taken off of windows in black and white
movies?

In the convenience store I am in, right now as I am writing this…
In here, right now, everybody looks like a potential
bank robber:

For every body there is not a body
An absence everywhere, like the lines around ghosts

The coffee dresser is clutching a glock under his cardigan
And the old man in front of me is getting ready to bum rush the counter
and take the cigarettes and lottery with him

But this isn’t a bank, so how could they be bank robbers?

Oh, the sky is such a liar now, the lake too
It said it would be a good day in its blue hue

For every body there is, a dream gets crushed
But the atmosphere in here is so vacant,

No-one will commit to anything—they are scared it
will come back to haunt them like the mud earlier in the poem

I once knew a ghost who took chances, who held up a
mirror and said, see— there is my breath, call me dead now, I dare you

The dance you do tonight could very well be your last thought.


2005