Guzlowski-Stepek: The Never-ending Poem

 you are the forest, green as dark dark as clean clean as dirt dirty clean you are the air breathed in by the tree tree becomes me me becomes you blown by the wind you don't need a weatherman but the answer is there blowing past the unlistening crowd you are the clearing in the forest dark as light night is day day is life life is the golden hay harvested in the summer heat

You hear the wind knocking long shadows done up into ribbons the hollow sound a stick against a log the mud firming, the wind dries it more than the sun, more than two weeks in July, just the wind moving some You hear a scratching you wonder and decide a bush maybe Forsythia brushing an oak elm some tree in the stand nearby you say twelve weeks from now they'll be in bloom, yellow flowers coming up soft paper but now just wind if you had a kite you'd stand with your back to the wind, release it, watch it move like a wave of birds (say sparrows, sparrows are cheap) you wonder has the heat of the last few days loosened the trees, greased their limbs so now with this wind they move like waves I'm sure it's not from here this wind here the wind is quiet says please asks for butter with its bread But this wind is too much even for some birds they stay out of it sure wait it out behind trees and

Gimme an easy death a fast asleep then deid death no rage rage against the dying of the light death but a simple, quiet, then completely quiet death a death compatible with the finality of death a death as soft and barely noticed as a mouse a death that accepts it's the end, the real end, no kid-on end a death that is all wrapped up and cosy and warm before cold and stiff in the curious way it is 

Give me no easy death, No bed with soft pink roses No lovers and children gathered To watch me snore toward death! I want to groan and squirm and laugh And cry and plead and scold And curse the death that comes for me like it comes for you! And if I can’t, then push me To the closet and shut the bloody door. I’ll wait for death like a broken whore Closed to all but sorrow.

  In 2144, I’ll be very dead,  not there's any other form of dead. I'm buried in a bookstore, not in the classics section nor under poetry.  I'm under a Clearance Sale banner. You’ll be buried in the Van Gogh, Dickinson, Thoreau section for those fully discovered long after death. I ask you to sing The Sound of Silence. You’ll say you don't know it then you sing the whole song. Hello darkness, my old friend.

  In 2044, I’ll be 94.  Every bookstore  will be a graveyard for books.    Reading will be dead.   I’ll be in a wheel chair  looking at the grave  of all my books.   You’ll be standing next to me   and I’ll ask you to sing  “Shall We Gather at the River.” You’ll sing it  like God is listening.