Cousin Richard
Who said I is inside?
Oh! I wish IT wasn’t!
Put IT up in a tree
Or on a clothing line
There in sultry Hampton.
Hang IT up to dry with all our tears
In sweltering Hanoi.
(The air was thick everywhere IT went. You could almost say suffocating…)
If IT can’t make it in light
We’ll remember IT otherwise
IT is a name and a belief.
IT is a conception of a thing.
IT was moving, breathing, and
Bearing form
It has since broken down
IT can be missed.
IT can shape meaning.
IT can dance in echoes and strange instances.
When gunsmoke rose it made breathing room for
Growing breathless
The roar of bombs rang out in memory
—Mind, moment, a series of mirrors IT passed by—
And in the blackened earth
What’s there to gain
But the sick ease of sucking down poison?
—Permeate. Waxing. Turning blackness.
The empty spaces where your life remains.
Holes in the world here or there, in Virginia or Vũng Tàu—
Those mosquitoes hover in the moonlight,
Slowly descending to the source of
An inanimate scream dissolving in the air,
A void made where IT, faces and names
—Fond thoughts beyond all farewells—
Kissed God
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