WORLD WAR COVID
Poems, mine and theirs
In a Rush To Get High
I ran into Death the other day,
A long gone acquaintance
Whose name I had forgotten
– I forget names: cursed incapacity –
A boorish distant relative
I never took to as a child and had avoided since
Glimpsed coolly through hectic traffic;
A real bore, in other words, not amusing;
Beckoning me like a long lost friend
From across the teeming artery.
I turned my back on him and took French leave.
He had never deserved a better reply,
No matter how inseparable we become in good time.
Life’s pitiless fitness scheme will shut down this body of mine,
Will wrinkle it sexless ugly, shred it to stinking rags,
Shed my soul at this body’s last gasp.
From vital reality with uncertain dreams,
To ghostly realities and a solid dream.
So I let the sea snake be my spirit guide
Or his darker brother, secretary bird
Familiar totems both loyal and clever,
Our intimacies shared like grains of sand,
Steadier than a good war dog.
Together across WeaponWorld and beyond that
To PeaceWorld and its glades of Eden,
With all humanity for company.
The oldest, greatest, wisest tribe
Forged like chrome alloy and stainless steel,
As bright as the universe can make it.
In the he cosmic cloud of DNA
Fleeting softly through space-time,
As ephemeral as smoke,
Carbon-based souls vault the cosmic heat death
Fleas runs down by the prairie fire.
Me, I’m in a rush to get high.
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