Special Guests Week (+): #5

The week of special guest writers comes to a close (check back with us next week for more guest writers and don't forget about the zine #2 celebration/poetry reading at 12th Street Books Thurs night at 7:30) today with the piece posted below submitted by Erxulie. It came with a note that states, "Oh, a small piece of this is taken from Billy Collins, the wires of the night, because I did not want to finish this poem. Because, you see, I was not ready to let go of

His Death

I thought about the moment of his death so many times. There in the overlapping beams of the sun and the shadows of the curtains. I've awoken screaming from it, I've slept sound, crying from it, but I have yet to be appeased of it. The moments after it were easily forgotten by those not affected.

His death has taken so many forms. The first was reincarnation, becoming the green can of paint I chose for my wall. The gray desolate buildings on a rainy day, and my perpetual, endless, insatiable loneliness.

His death now had a beginning but no end. Left wondering like a child with no mother. Set adrift like a vikings funeral pyre, the remnants left to the imagination.

In a freakish storm of pink green and bad judgment, I took his death to bed with me and claimed it as my lover. We lay together and bred an illegitimate child, born of sickness and despair, dying not far from my womb.

His death wore slacks and suspenders, a long button up and smoked a delicious, tempting, seductive cigar. I took it to dance with me, and dance it did. It took me by the hand and laughed and danced and played with me like a child on a merry-go-round. His death loved me and would not let me go.

I carried his death with me in my pocket for many years. He wriggled, fought and bit me with every step. But I could not let it go.

Someday, his death will be the clear glass shimmer on a lake, the clouds in a Texas sunrise, my fresh air. Some day it will be the light of day, and the next day, and all the days to follow, and he will move into the future like the sharp tip of a pen moving across a blank page of paper.