(color art, krawczyk1.jpg)

 
.................................
Allegory Dressed in Short Pants
.................................

There it is, almost, in the back yard grass:
our gaping-hole-to-be, our pond.
With enough excavated dirt, they say,
to bury fifty dead. (No one's said that, really.)
My theory is that ponds are really childhoods,
someone else's childhood, someone
who lived long enough ago that he
used to dress in short pants. For that was
what they called them then. "Put on
your short pants!" the boy's mother would say.
But the sad part, really, is what is lost:
the boy, the boy's mother, the term "short pants."
Leaving what, really, to be uncovered
in this soon-to-be twelve-foot hole?
A muddy hole, I should point out, that could take
a year or more to fill with rain. Which is, I know,
another metaphor for longing. Watch it
coming down. Watch it land as pock marks
in the pond. Which is why I imagine the boy standing
on this grass where soon our hole will be.
His mother licks her fingers, perhaps,
to slick down his cowlick. While the boy,
in short pants, does his best to duck away.

 
.................................
American Improvisation
.................................

So if its not me then suppose you keep your mouth shut.

And if you want the deathbed scene, here it is:

I spat into the river and the river spat back.
I made pancakes out of my own severed foreskin.
I blinked into the black-clustered stars.

And when I tried to build a lasting love out of nicknames,
to have the musicians begin the overture at the exact moment
I started toward the stage,

and when I moved my legs as though I meant to dance,
I was suddenly laid out again in the Reposing Room,
and they were getting ready to drain away the blood.

.................................
Doug Ramspeck
.................................

 
Copyright © Doug Ramspeck
October 2012

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Copyright © 2004 A Small Garlic Press. All rights reserved.
Created on 2004/10/23. Updated last on 2012/10/21.