Poems
by Richard LeDue

 

 

The winter night seems

 

like a body no one loved enough

to stay with the night before the burial,

and even if we are left with a wanting

for the sort of body heat that tells lies

about how we won't die alone,

we'll still find ways to fall

out of bed with a bang

that wakes no one,

while the cold wind warns us,

only to be ignored.

 

 

 

 

 

Another Dreamless Night

 

An unwanted supermarket steak,

losing its colour like someone going grey,

isn't the sort of metaphor we want

to swallow, as falling snow

turns the parking lot into a death trap

we're all free to die in.

 

The cashier believing in the cash

register the same way one finds faith

in a bible they can't read

or someone else's words

that sound sure enough to make uncertainty

a little less uncertain.

 

It all leaves us no less hungry

than the atheist humming Christmas music,

while pondering the ethics of turkey farms

and genetically modified potatoes,

only to fall asleep

with an incomplete grocery list.

 

 

 

 

 

Fluttering Away

 

Minutes don't buzz like mosquitoes,

but are more like moths

eating through old clothes

and fluttering away when disturbed

by someone who never thought

they would have to dress a corpse

they once loved enough

to be seduced by the denial of how

we're all going to die.

 

A black funeral dress just another light

turned off so not to attract

the tiny wings of time.

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