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Most Living Creatures Leave No Ghost

 

MOST living creatures leave no ghost, and even if they do it’s totally useless.

Whereas, one can knock a hole in a brick wall with the ghost of a material object.

 

20 January 2001. A leafless little tree full of egg-shaped sparrows.

And every egg has a dot of blood; every dot, a nebula of extending branches.

 

In Mexico City, I saw a crushed dog skeleton into the asphalt.

The flesh had all turned to tar in the side-splitting sun…

 

Anything that’s the product of ten years of misery deserves respect. That’s why I

Respect this Rorschach grave, these sticky bones…

 

Books that give you plenty of time to yourself are not to be scorned.

For don’t we all need “just a little time to ourselves”—?

 

See how the stubborne damzell doth deprave my simple meaning!

She’s quick to sniff out insult in every little ambiguous phrase.

 

Praise is due Mother Nature at this, the start of her new fiscal year.

Silver maple’s printing money again; box elder’s opened its offices…

 

And even Madrid is putting out a few timid tender leaves.

A poem or two to be recited in the presence of the infant Mira.

from I Am Your Slave Now Do What I Say Find more by Anthony Madrid at the library

Copyright © 2012 Anthony Madrid
Used with the permission of Canarium Books.

Published in Anthony Madrid Poems

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