A Poem For The Gallows

By

I am talking to
a human skull held
out in my hand.
It doesn’t talk
back. So I dispose
of it somewhere
along the day trail
budding with sleep.
Fireflies fill our
yards. We’ll pet
the tethered horse,
feeling its silent
quiverings under
our fingertips.
Everything is
a little different here,
slightly magnified,
and then there’s you,
you who so suppose
my bluff, I invite
you to come and see
me satisfy your
hoax and forever
flailing thru unknown
unknowns. You’re
probably wondering
how I ended up
here. I really,
really really really
really don’t know
how else to say this.
Well, I kind of do.
But I’ll say no more.
I have no gift for
words. I have
a gift for turning
my head and end-
lessly, so instead
I’ll go ahead and I’ll
bury Courage, that
cowardly dog,
in a pink salted plot in
the desert boneyard.
I return to the city’s
dopey city lights,
to the black rainbow
puddles’ sprightly night.
“Arbeit macht frei”
is a line to live by.