Rattling the Bones

The Juju man shakes his bones

onto the scarred mahogany table,

bends his bald head to study the results.

The dry, scaled skin stretched

thin as vellum across his glistening

black dome which begins to bob

up and down like a mesmerized cobra.

He mutters something in unintelligible Cajun,

looks up and tells me,

with a wide toothless grin,

 that I’m under a curse

that’s why bad things keep happening to me.

He tells me it’s a generational curse;

something my grandfather

or great grandfather did a hundred years ago

is the cause of all my misfortune.

He hands me a small bag

called a gris gris,

that smells of earth and herbs,

tells me to wear it close to my heart

but if I really want to be free

I have to bury an egg

in a cemetery at midnight. 

He takes my forty dollars

and sends me away.

Beneath me I can feel

the bones of my ancestors

rattling their innocence. 

Published in Abbey, 2011

Necromancy

The dead man sits up and wants to talk about his life,

his sins and transgressions.

He’s Catholic and didn’t receive last rites.

I tell him to shut up, it’s too late,

his body is now an empty bag of meat,

his soul having flown the coop, crossed over,

gone to that great Disneyland in the sky.

Things got weird from there. 

The moon was casting a double helix

and a red caul covered the sky. 

The cadaver of a young girl cried

that such a thing hasn’t been seen

since Romulus Augustus was deposed  by Odoacer. 

I should have removed her tongue when I took her eyes. 

Now she thinks she’s Cassandra

issuing dire warnings of the apocalypse.

All around me, the dead begin to babble excitedly,

trying to climb off the tables where

I had so carefully arranged them.

I command them to get back,

but like sulking children they start to whine

and pout, stamping their feet,

demanding to go outside to gaze

at the portentous moon.

The rebellion continues until

I threaten to remove their brains.

I think I really need a new line of work

Published in Abbey, June 2011

The Magic Guitar

Itinerant, John Wanderer

strums his guitar all day long,

a penny a song, a dime a dance

while Napoleon Socrates prances along

in time to the music.

When they have collected all they need,

John takes Socrates by the lead

and off they ride

to the next town down the line.

And all the while John continues

to sing and play.

One chord changes night to day,

another and Spring become Fall

and still another turns the blue sky gray.

Every so often he frets a special chord,

a secret and awesome chord

that he and he alone knows.

And John, who is neither young nor old

any more than he is really a man

but something beyond our reckoning,

plays the song which will bring

the universe to an end.

Published in  Storyteller, Spring 2011

The Hypothetical Suicide

 On the day I suicided, I woke early,

showered, shaved and put on my best suit,

went down to the kitchen,

sat at the table and ate breakfast as usual. 

After cleaning the dishes,

I went into my office to kill myself.

The day after I suicided,

I took a walk around the neighborhood

and found the world

still spinning on its axis,

the sky in its proper place and the sun

staring its accusing eye down on my guilty head.

The neighbors averted their gazes

ashamed to see a suicide, so recently dead,

up and walking about. 

When I got to work

someone else was doing my job.

“We really didn’t expect you in today,”

they said,  “the dead are normally so unreliable.”

At home, I found my wife

had remarried and given birth to triplets.

“I’m so sorry dear,” she said,

“I couldn’t stand being a widow.

See what wonderful children my new husband and I have. 

But you can stay in the attic if you like.”

I went to my attic and contemplated suicide. 

But I had done that yesterday

and hated to be redundant. 

Instead, I lay down on a bed of nails

and slept until I forgot I was ever alive.

 Published in Chiron Review, Issue #95 Summer 2011

Among the Many and Ulysses Redux

AMONG THE MANY

                    Outside my bedroom,

the first robin warbles a canticle to spring.

We have traversed the snowy catacombs

of dark February and come out safely on the other side.

Only a stubble of wintry frost remains as a reminder

how like a woman is March, nurturing and loving

yet capable of such violent storms.

                    In the dim,

early dawn light, the sun and moon

stare at each other from opposite sides of the sky. 

I flourish my hat and bow, offering a polite

“Top of the morning to you, Madam Moon.”

And for one brief moment, I am

acutely aware of my place in the universe.

                    The only sentient being

in all this vast, ever expanding galaxy

who is in this exact spot,

who is at this exact time

thinking these exact thoughts. 

Then the moment is gone and I am

free of such existential philosophies.

                    Once again I am

a happy, ignorant fool among the many,

just another Spring drunk imbecile

out for a walk on a pleasant March morning

while the sun sits in lotus, a grinning

yellow Buddha hanging in the eastern sky.

ULYSSES REDUX

Has it been twenty years since you went away?

And not a word in all that time – no phone calls,

No letters, not even a postcard.  Been exploring

The nine circles of Dante’s Hell to hear you tell.

Did you really believe time would freeze

Like a snapshot, awaiting your return before resuming

Its relentless motion.  The old gang that used to gather

On Saturday nights down at the Sunoco for beer

And poker have all gone on with their lives

And your sweetheart has married your enemy

Who sleeps in the bed that was meant for you

And the child that should have been yours

Calls him “daddy.”  So tell me then,

Do you still love your Penelope

Now that you’re home at last?

"Among the Many" and "Ulysses Redux" originally appeared in Poem, May 2011