Death Returns from Holiday

This poem was influenced, not so much by Meet Joe Black as
by the earlier film Death Takes a Holiday (1934). In this
version of the story, Death tires of his job and decides
to woo the daughter of a millionaire (played by Frederic March).
While he is "on holiday" people stop dying. The terminally ill,
those horribly maimed by accidents, all continue to suffer
because they are unable to die.
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Death Returns from Holiday

        "... Nothing ever felt this good."
Marie Howe's "Death, the Last Visit"
       

I find you and you wrap your fleshy thighs
        Around my torso,
Spinning I send you around the emptiness of your room.

I'm sorry I was late, but you understand--
        Your open mouth beckons for it
The saltiest of any salty cock you've ever had.

Now that I have you, I won't ever leave,
        Even after that bitchy smell
Fills the air with that aroma which is only you.

I take you the way you always hated it
        Doggie-style, like Cerberus--three-headed,
Triphallic; and I'm lucky you're a three input kind of gal.

My tongue pries open your mouth, your tongue swells
        With lust at my insistence
Feeding my advance with your sweetest breath.

You thought no man could ever reach this deep inside--
        No man can touch your heart the way I do
Perhaps dislodge a kidney, pierce a lung or two.

A sour nipple explodes at the nearness of my touch
        Your arm twitches with residual delight
Stray neurons firing like that one last, best orgasm of the night.

There's something about that glisten in your eye that says,
        "God, forgive me." But you know I always do,
Then, thick lips pressed to your ovule mouth, I say:

        "I love you....
I'm sorry I was late. Did I make it up to you?"
        I hope so, because forever after,
A corpse, three days dead, is all that's left of you.

The Errors of Poetry

I wrote this poem after reading T.R. Hummer's "Where you go when she sleeps"

I found his poem to be deeply offensive, and I wrote this in the white heat of anger...
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The Errors of Poetry

    "... whatever vacuum you were in before"
    T.R. Hummer's "Where you go when she sleeps"


What does it mean when you walk into the living room
    and see a guy sitting on your couch,
        his hand cradling a woman's head against his lap?

What is it with this guy?
What is it about her face in his crotch,
    that makes him think about oats being sucked out of a silo?
Why is it that all things golden,
    even "the deep rush of the grain"
        remind him of death,
    or his last, best orgasm while drunk on pure-grain alcohol
        or high on Panama Gold?

Is it her golden hair, tinted black at the roots?
Is it the tattoo of their golden retriever
    inked with brown henna on her shoulder blade?
Is it the golden ring, piercing her lower lip, which brings
    to mind that time she took his yellow Beemer
        and crashed it into the lake
(and how--inspired by his name--she made it up to him later)?
Or is it the "vacuum you were in before" that great emptiness
    deep within her golden skin--her mind, like Yorick's,
        which begs over and over to be filled.

How much depends on rendering into verse
    the corpse of some forgotten farmer's son
        lost in a silo full of oats?

And why does this poem remind me of Eric Clapton,
    or anyone who's ever written a poem about a guardian angel?

        I don't know--you tell me.