Sunday, July 31, 2011

Poem With An Old Friend

So I've been corresponding with an old friend, and we've been doing this thing where we write poems, and send them to each other, and then we steal a line or phrase from one of the poems, and then we write new poems from those stolen lines, and then we send the new poem along, and we continue.  This is the first poem I wrote like that.  I will post more as they come.

**


Above The Rain
Back then steps through doorways rang, audible
as late night distant fireworks, some unexpected

arrivals.  As such: portents.  Carriers of the dead.
I cried out to him, but he was gone by then, gone

as god, as gratitude, as elegance.  We had moved
on to anger.  The sky fell, but it fell apart, not

down on our heads like plaster from some soggy
ceiling.  Yes, our house was falling to pieces,

but pieces of what, I wondered, smoking atop
the ruins, scanning the rubble for an errant

finger, a shock of bright red hair, a tiny cry
reaching up above the omen of the rain.