Grave Poems  

am consecratingsingsinging the first lines of the book of stitches in the land of hearts not bubble gum neatly wrapped hearts with cute phrases that keep up with modern times like seventeen I am writing lines among the grave poetry no baudaleering lines or poems of horror like Mary Shelley’s monsters these words etch the mystery to life and are lost in the flickering these phrases dont flicker they shine with the ghosts of memorfireflies My friend her dog black lab I have a fear of black dogs not the drinking kind but the kind that showed up and I felt something was wrong like fiver and I was right that was full of shivering we went to see the horses and fire ate from the ground and ended dying in my arms cold and ashen I learned what death was but i never learned where her grave lied and here writing these lines I am reminded why i never took acid it was the strychnine and the shivering remembering friend in detox i am realizing this poem is a shopping list of fears I startled another rabbit among a hollow in the graves he was resting in the woods And the sound of rabbits high and singing no lullabies but the knife that strips nerve to bone This shopping lists of fears the biggest fear is of self' being afraid and lonely in this heart of suburbia the graves look like the buildings behind this place is not for the dead but the living neatly ordered skyscrape behind .

© 2006 Phillip Jagger