Death Style 3.11.21

I’m sick of writing the word ghost

sick of the silent h

the most rotten luck and the most rotten faith.

The children are tucked up in bed like in Medea

crouched behind the roofridge and ready to rise

with their mom on the machina

tricked out in flame.

The fridge motor whines.

Everything whines

like the moon when the big hand points to twelve

and the plot arrives

and a fleet of police choppers rise up in the sky.

They want to ride away from their crimes

unlike Medea

who spells hers out on the sky

in milk that rots and smells.

She carries her dead kids like whelks in a bucket

and everybody knows

how charred flesh falls back to show the bone

but nobody knows

why the river rolls back

to upchuck what’s dunked

there like a drunk

hatchback

with its headlights on.

The river just likes it that way

and the river’s like, open your eyes.

Why is that

river mud

so dirty and so right.

I’m getting tired of the h in river

sorry I mean ghost I mean the fridge light you write by

well you paid for it now

you gotta lie

down in bed in a dress that’s too tight.

The sight of money

draining in the sink

then I hocked

then I hurled

then I upchucked the Voyager

all the way out into space

like a hatchback

with its lights on

and the baby-on-board sign on board

to upload its payload of sound

into the clouds

someplace else.

ha! ha!

The h in catastrophe

sticks to the p

like a stray cat limps around the block

with one paw up.

Medea’s kids get restless

need to eat, need to pee.

Every once in a while their little faces show above the roofline.

Mother thou has slain me they mewl

under their milkbreaths

waiting to be picked up.

They pace around

run the zippers of their tracksuits

up and down.

Meanwhile moonlight slicks the payphones

with desolate glamour

the metal umbilical cords and

dark receivers.

Meanwhile I’m so furious and meanwhile

you’re so young

you think you can hide

what you stole from me

beneath your pillow

I’m looking at it right now

my machina

where your crossed arms cradle

your sleeping head.