Geoffrey Gatza

The onyx days of black winter nights

I wake in the middle of the night screaming.

The cats come to my side and comfort me.

Only the gray squirrels look forward to winter.

The onyx days of black winter nights singing

To trees the acorns songs of slumbering.

I am in front of television listening to the radio.

I wait patiently for those literary electric hums;

The body is lying outstretched pining for sleep.

Jagged tears define the years in my fading skin.

A life hooked to heart machines is not a poetry.

That damn line is new yet it makes me timeworn. 

I never owned anything but thoughts, or memories.

That is to say, except for a few moments, most of my life

Are golden plagiarisms. A green seesaw goes up and down.

I find myself blinded with anger on a dimly lit playground.

I was five. I had nothing in my mind but candy. I am nothing.

A wink and a nod salutes my lost memories. 

It is life, the end of life, actually. Metallic green

Paint chips away on the steel jungle gym. Today I am

In my hospital bed reminiscing tobacco, drugs, poetry.

*

Earth Revolves Itself Once Again

—after Pierre Reverdy

Resounding blooms

Blue birds fly north.

In the backyard where everything seems to happen

The squirrel darts through our leafless lilac tree.

Outside a woman is cleaning the table; a man makes fire.

Water streams from a hose clearing the driveway apron.

A rainburst negotiates with a cloud.

The sun abrupts with striking chimes.

*

Watching last year’s pumpkin transcend determinism

Even now this cemetery is accumulating.

The hills darken. The dead

sleep in their blue graves,

the grounds having been

picked clean, the ribbons

faded, the pinwheels piled at the dumpster

among wind ripped tiny American flags

as garbagemen come forward for collection:

Now feel tension fail to achieve.

Concatenation transpires.

Tears melt into sweat.

This is the barrenness

of grief; to watch life rot

as we move ever forward.

  

© Geoffrey Gatza

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