Blood

Blood (A Pseudo-epitaph for Arthur Greenberg.)

Blood all gone

Platelets dead

Blood like mine

I never asked

A creaky casket

Teak not mahogany

Is there a veneer on that?

Piles of dirt

Thudding secrecy

Nails biting wood

Keeping my curiosity out

Barring my identity

But there is safe passage

For the worms

A feast for annelids

As I walk starving

For ancient rituals.

An endless game of telephone

Generations long

Dashed upon the digital rocks

The pulp and bone of memories

Plucked up like carrion

By hungry gulls of change.

Would they be proud that I have broken

Free of traditional chains

Taking up the anvil

Forging for myself

Covered wagon fording the rapids

Leaving my origins for this

Fruitless trailblazing I insist is progress?

Kurt Vonnegut and Marine Park

Chain smoking and Brownsville bodegas

Buenos Aires and Patriarchy

Buried beneath

Earth packed like lasagna

Three-seventy-five

For forty minutes

And deaf to my burning questions

To my doubts

To my shame

Of never asking

After the recipe

Just devouring what was

Set before me

And leaving my plate crusted

Dried flecks of sauce

Like blood

That I neglected

To address.