that awful brown
scraggly leftover skeleton of a poke salad
bush rising up over
the newborn tulip leaves just dying(!)
To get themselves in bloom
but i've misplaced the machete somewhere
along with the scores
of other things i've lost or just
thrown away in some absent-minded fever
of abandon or containment
way i did it to my glasses last year and found out
finally that i'd left them on the bed
and sat down on them
which would've crushed a lesser pair but these
have stainless-steel frames dating back
to the eighties
before we started getting all our stainless
from North Korea
which is the plot our government is really
hiding, one that has nothing
nuclear about it, just cheapo stainless made from
recycled stuff they got from god knows
where not oneida
and not unlike all those poems i used to think
i could write about the morning's
morningness full up to here with the scent
of young poke salad leaves
just after you've cut them and layered them
in the bucket and sprinkled some water on them
from down at the creek
to trick the fool things into thinking they're still alive
� 2004 by James Lineberger
