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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 3980 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention Warren Zevon’s Last Night Lauriette (Laurie Byro) I remember when I saw you at the hospital. You were ashen, already gone. You were on your way to knitting yourself a soul, a new set of bones. Before that night, I wandered the islands for seven years. I was young and lost, crazy and wise as loons, nesting in a lady slipper moon. I tried men on, wore them like a scuffed moment. We walked barefoot, my fingers curled around tattered ribbons, the sun sinks ribbon by pink ribbon into the next season. When I found the rock carvings, the poster of Haile Sellassie, when I heard the stories of animals gutted and skinned, I shuddered. When he held a knife and ran it through fire then traced my belly, I moaned. I longed for transformation. I had never come this close to understanding. The moon makes changes, a dark star shines as bright over cities as under water. I wanted to drown then, just to prove I would rise to the surface. And now you stand there, with no head, making me wonder if we all become our old stories. There is no tenderness on the block, this I know. Just as when someone upon hearing of death asks, “who cares?” Death can’t be shot, or bought or tricked with or without a sense of humor. I don’t know where this is leading but I do know the thread that connects us is usually despair. It’s just the next darkness, that’s what night time really is. You held strange little insects in your hands, and when you breathed on them, they turned into fire. I finally figured out the switch you were talking about, wasn’t the one I asked you to lay upon my back. |
