Life’s Little Misdirections 🥀🦋

Conferred - After Rot

I don’t know life
what typifies sheltered me
but as … silent majority
white male

What burrs
from my pale, ash lips
must be white noise

In the mad crush
of a sound tunnel
that’s trapped me within
below mud
ancient as layers
that swallow whole monuments
collapse pyramids

Maybe, one tedious earth duster
will dig me up
some day
put me in a museum
From dingy little backwoods
where beetles lay waste to pine
whisk me off
to Paris, Rome and other
high-brow, wine regions
(if grapes haven’t extinguished)

Run your gold fingers
through my dust
Cart my bones
city to city
in velvet lined
glass case

But I care first for the scrolls
not in future centuries
or my hollow expression
unchanged
But be conferred now
before rodentia and maggots
come beneath box elder
at the bank
with a rusted-through gun.


10.15.22
39 lines, free (as a dove) verse

My thanks to J. Cash grunge and alt rock covers
for keeping it reel

bullied into silence as a youth
shamed if I don’t button it
because I step in it like chewing gum
Who put it there?