Halloween Poem (2)

Bones.  Bones are what I think of.  

And the moon.  Bones and the moon.  

Tonight, the dead will touch

the living while they sleep.  

Tonight I will feel the blood coursing

through my veins.  The bones will click

and clack together.  Come here.  

I want to kiss your costume and tease

apart memories like pulled pork

and swallow wine in gulps while feeling

your adam’s apple switch.  Come here.  

I want one last ghost waltz before you return

to the other side, one last skeleton frame

dance in remembrance of the death

of no technology.  Bite me on the painted lip.  

Seethe through your teeth.  Play a deathly tune

on that fiddle made by dead germans.  

Swallow the moon like a pill so we can watch

it slide down your esophagus and shine out

like a lantern through the cracks in your rib cage.

Halloween Poem (1)

Under the skin of my face webs

are spun from memory spiders

connecting Calvin and Hobbes

to Indian tabla class to yesterday’s howling

wind that blew open the shutters

in the sun room around nine thirty

and when I look out my eyeballs I see

other faces waltzing down the street

in Phillips, other faces covered in skin,

bobbing back and forth atop bodies,

bodies entombing calaveras y esqueletos

and some fiendish ghouls seek candy

and others don’t give two shits for

the addictions of this life are about to crest

and the spiders deal with vanishing legs

like the disappeared leaves of crooked

black branches in the neighbor’s fenced in yard.  

I look out my eyeballs for porch lights

lit up, welcoming, for open hearts lit up,

welcoming: there aren’t too many anymore.  

And the ones that are, are only on

from five to seven pm tonight.