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Down at the Mexican Cemetary |
They are throwing a party with bass guitars
everywhere in the Mexican cemetery
Tombs lined with the lost and the living
Acrobats under a disco lamp that
Throws stars, while widows mad
from grief 20 years now, rock, rock
on the spindle of their folding chairs
And sing like a shadow in the blue light
Huddled and smoking, they languish
In the heavily scented imagination
Of endless rafts of sugar skulls
By this virtue, I should be standing
In the garden tonight, candles lit on
The sunflower bed in a deep row
I should be out there tonight, with my
anger and romance, in love and tatter
I should be howling at the moon, growling
breaking my fountain pen on the ground,
tearing the last of the blackened Giants of Russia
and African Possum Faces from her grip
in the earth, I should be smoking a cigar
in a negligee and talking to the sunflowers
Dissolute, holding a Scotch and milk – instead –
knocking back from the unspeakable madness
I can’t stop talking about, waiting for night
To fall on the stoop of my shoulders, a hoarfrost
Wounded, hateful and angry, wishing with
All I have for a Mariachi band in the summer
moonlight, blue as the grieving dresses of widows
Dignified street mutts poised on the monuments
The women drunk with pain and fury, gone, all gone
The planets whirling, each one a spent soul, drunk
As skunks and smoking like a barn afire
copyright 2014
Viola
Weinberg |
