"Bones Man"

I grieve for the losses yet to come,
The coroner carving in blunt white bone
The names of the dead like a permanent plaque;
This man is my friend, dressed in fresh-pressed black.
He sits at the table with the rest of us.
“Pass the salt” – or is that dust?
Folding paper napkins into cheap grotesques,
An everyday hero’s quaint bequest.
And shooting the breeze like a friendly chum:
One day their hour (and yours) will come.

__________

Inspired by thoughts on death at KGB Bar.

"Kaleidoscope"

When you and I are lying in bed, you don’t seem so tall.
These days you’ve stretched to reach me.
I’m low for you tonight.
You look for God in a kid’s kaleidoscope
And the meaning of life to fit in all those shifting shapes,
Yet to learn that Life is given the name Death at birth,
And God is his schoolyard friend,
Whispering in his ear dirty, lucky jokes.

__________

This poem takes its first line from something I read on some scaffolding that caught my eye on my way to work one day.

"I'm A Tiny Man In Your Swimming Pool"

I'm a tiny man in your swimming pool
Mouthward ho! in your crazy straw
Thrashing upstream like a slippery fool

Bashful and powder white, you chalk up the rule
I pee in the water; you lithely withdraw
I'm a tiny man in your swimming pool

I try to fight it as in Catholic school
The awkward curve of your hardest jaw
Thrashing upstream like a slippery fool

Sometimes I felt the wet eyes, so cool
Peering from corners with primmest paw
I'm a tiny man in your swimming pool

Attending your fin-bellied Oedipal school
In the best of your mates lies my tragic flaw
Thrashing upstream like a slippery fool

Before me your face, so raw and so cruel
Eyes behind chalky white mask, and you saw
I'm a tiny man in your swimming pool
Thrashing upstream like a slippery fool

__________

A poem I wrote at the request of a classmate of mine, Shayne Terry, from David Lehman's class last year. She's publishing a follow-up to last year's Jam Today publication, which was the culmination of our efforts as a class. Shayne challenged me to write a poem with the phrase "tiny man" at a reading David Lehman did at KGB Bar.