It's all gonna break

The ice
on the
corner of
the roof
came cracking
down from
the second story,
plummeting towards
the gray concrete,
already wet from the
dripping water. The
great icicle-
three feet long!-
crumpled into the concrete,
finally breaking
with a much less
profound sound
than I thought
should accompany
the death of
that damned winter.

I am found guilty of 'Reverence at an Inopportune Time'

Tom Petty comes on the radio and
we think of each other.
We think of your navy-blue sheets.
Jesus dies again and
we eat him again.
The meat was tender but
you were a vegetarian.
Your velvet navy-blue sheets
smelled like death everynight,
smelled like daffodils and death everynight.
Then they tore down the door with
fire-axes and crowbars, barking
orders in a language that
no one needed to understand.
They pulled me from your navy sheets
and doused me in lemon-scented bleach
in order to loosen my grip and my tongue.
They brought me to the empty
interrogation room with the
concrete walls, two way mirror and
the table from IKEA named Herman.
Now I am here, wishing that I remembered
all the names for my furniture.
The man with wide shoulders in the deep black uniform
with the golden buttons and icy trim
slaps me across the face, again and again,
backhand and forehand, palm then wedding ring,
until I confess that I don't even know
what a daffodil smells like.

Climb

A Buddhist monk in yellow-orange robes
is climbing the snow-covered face
of a moderate peak in the Himalayas
alone.

The day is so clear that the snow
looks like bright light, and he feels that,
if this world were not a transient pit of nothing,
he might be walking on the mountain
face of God.

The slope is not so steep that he needs pick-axes or pulleys.
He leans forward and steps surely as he ascends.
He does not fear death. He does not even wonder
what it might be like to be climbing
the Pyrenees instead.

He knows this peak is sacred. But he does wonder why
hot dog buns come in packs of 8, and hot dogs in packs of 10.
This has bothered him ever since he was young.
Ever since it was the first question that
his parents could not answer.

He was wearing a shirt with brightly colored
Japanese robots fighting across the front
when he walked into his parents' blue bedroom
and asked. They told him, “sometimes, we can't say just how or
why the world is.”

He thought they were wrong. A few years later,
he thought that maybe it was a good idea to
give up meat altogether. He thought,
“maybe I should leave New Jersey altogether,”
“maybe I'll find Peace in the East.”

Now he prays to the Eternal Buddha as he ascends.
Now he turns his copper toned prayer beads between thumb and forefinger
as the snow's crunch beneath his feet
echoes across the gorge.