http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5640
Little funerals
Are barrow-sad like white sap
that trickles down cut bark.
The honey that life lurches
and reveals when it is wrong.
Are thin, narrow; smell of just-dead.
I met a kind of sharp freshness
that took years to wash off
when I threw these roses into
your eternal bathtub. I
showered you with dirt because
you were old and needed it.
Others helped.
Somehow you were Real Clean
and I was covered in this
persistent face paint, toxic
and contrived, oil-based like
the coats of many living things.
I rubbed myself raw and bare
in search of the Real Layer
for years before
I understood. Being alive
is a dirty thing: like murals,
like clothing, like gardens.
Little funerals
Are barrow-sad like white sap
that trickles down cut bark.
The honey that life lurches
and reveals when it is wrong.
Are thin, narrow; smell of just-dead.
I met a kind of sharp freshness
that took years to wash off
when I threw these roses into
your eternal bathtub. I
showered you with dirt because
you were old and needed it.
Others helped.
Somehow you were Real Clean
and I was covered in this
persistent face paint, toxic
and contrived, oil-based like
the coats of many living things.
I rubbed myself raw and bare
in search of the Real Layer
for years before
I understood. Being alive
is a dirty thing: like murals,
like clothing, like gardens.
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