On death and the spirit.
“ … winds can visit my carcass
plus perhaps maybe recall
us dust to dust to dust …”
You can enjoy this poem as a broadside by dragging the image below to your desktop — or scroll down to read as regular text.
Holy Smoke Vanities
–
i. Delusions of Grandeur
R.I.P Tom Wolfe, 1931–2018
Snubbed, existing barely, sleeping on the street, oy…
we too coulda been Stanford U intellectual snobs
elevated by self-important societal smolder
blown up carcinogenic bonfires’ gasbag
refinery good old boy asses who was
always trying to avoid us hoi polloi
’cept to bogart homeless for tokes.
–
ii. Spiritual Reestimation
Scintillating gritty gray ash
no worms to try dem bones
dispersed under flowering
trees. It seems most sensible.
–
Cremation reconnoitered
jumpy as puppets strung
out on such secular strings
some rational revelations
–
thus we bought two plots
just equidistant between
both sets of our parents
so the children and theirs
–
scattered to fare-thee-well
winds can visit my carcass
plus perhaps maybe recall
us dust to dust to dust …
–
iii. Dark Sleep Under Dung-Hill Haiku
“If God is God He is not good,
If God is good He is not God;
Take the even, take the odd.”
— Archibald MacLeish, J.B.
–
Horror the horror
child dying first — bullcrap on
God’s honorific.
–
iv. Bemused Ignobility
Raconteur racketeer
— once rascally white
unwisecrackerer snob,
now drab crappy hack
gibberish piecework
jibberjabbery jobber
–
do not nostalgically
gaze back to the light
or sadly front toward
darker depredations:
look forward straight
or youz upside-down.
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Gerard Sarnat’s honors include the Dorfman Prize, a first place in a Poetry in the Arts competition, and nominations for Pushcarts and Best of the Net. His work has appeared in many journals, including Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Poetry Quarterly, Free State Review, Poetry Circle, Poets And War, Texas Review, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, and Review Berlin. His books are Homeless Chronicles, Disputes, 17s, and Melting the Ice King, all from Pessoa.
