funeral for a doll

so fragile it was

so fragile it is

a porcelain offering from

a man without false shine

alabama hardness that often hid wealth mined

from beneath the carnage he often

reached the bottom of, acting as if he had

discovered some new form of extinction

in a land he defended as if it was his alone…

but her smile always lit the exit tunnel

when he choose to suffer the surface of things:

he would rise from the bottom slowly

as if lifted on a scaffold of crud and circumstance.

she smiles and giggles, as she did back then

remembering the way he handled her firstborn

pulling it out of a greasy bag that was

as rippled as the wine it once held gently

the same way he would hold her

from time to time, his breath smelling like that church

on the corner- he said it was his church- where the

men and women preached funny when they came out…

he would preach funny sometimes too

but he didn’t preach at the funeral for her little baby

that broke after it fell off the kitchen table when

he slapped her sister, sending her flying underneath it

into one of the already rickety legs.

he said that he was sorry about what happened to her baby

he grinned and said he would try to buy her another one

she really didn’t believe that he bought that one

but his teeth shined just like her little baby did

so she just smiled back and giggled…

lost sketches

death was not so much final as it was finished

like a chalked profile slowly filled

with asphalt and aspirations

blackness as texture and tone

the mixture for pencils broken in desperation

upon the outlined emptiness

within the outstretched hands

(the grabbing and pulling back)…

we sometimes die like unfinished sketches.

I can see him sitting in the basement

in the darkness, for long periods of time

staring at the dusty, webbed, gray paper

(and the occasional unopenable window)

holding, caressing, the tinted skin

he had poured himself into

(brown like himself and just as fragile)

a prop for the art,

the partial depictions of the man

that he had run away from,

of the man he had become,

with each stroke that he didn’t make her

scream out his favorite portrait,

or simply appraise him as a man

within the walls of that gallery

(uneven alley of self-portraits bought and sold)

where each of their works were displayed

(it was her motions that often formed

the brush, if not her tongue)…

there is that portrait on the elder’s wall

confirming that he had compared sketches with the sun

and had exchanged notes with leaves that fell out of season

beauty both portrayed and betrayed, turned against,

within the walls of that gallery

(collections of reproduced conscience bought and sold)

where his profane works were the most celebrated…

we are sometimes forgotten like lost sketches.