Poem: I Can Move Things With My Mind

And I live by myself.
My dead grandfather watches me
through house flies.
I have many books on parapsychology
and the occult.
His audacious flies harbor the wanting
to touch my face.
I haven't had a girlfriend in six years,
not even on the Internet.
When I found him dead, he had flies crawling
over his mouth and slipped upper denture.
They came in through the hole in the window
following the scent of a free meal.
The flies want inside my head to tongue my grey
and tell me about the afterlife of decay and dissemination.
He used to talk to the chickens in the yard
and keep a hand written daily record of the weather on spiral bound, single subject, college rule, notebooks
with red covers.

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Poem: Little by little Hank gets to Heaven (Hank - part 1)

I routinely scavenge the dumpsters behind
those apartments next to that Safeway downtown.
It's an easy way to avoid the Good-Will.

Today I found half a bottle of Windex
and a toothbrush and gave them to crazy Hank
so he could clean the maggots out of his leg.

But he pushed them back at me, unwanted,
and muttered something about God's weird way,
Hell on earth, and redemption of human flesh.

Old Hank, he believes in God, a loving God,
but not a God of Good-Will or of giving,
but a God of taking and transforming.

"The maggots don't bother me much," Hank sighs,
"But at night when I sleep, I hear the flies—
the winged angels whispering to their young;
Soon you will fly, but not until you're done."

The hungry cherubs, plump and milky white,
chewing the fat and seeking the light,
making Hank's flesh into their own,
let him know substance is a material loan.

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Poem: To the Worms I Bequeath...

The red-eyed fly landed on the gravestone
knowing that a large food source had been buried
inaccessible to its appetite,
given to the worms again.
The fly wondered why Humans gave such offerings to the wigglies.
Was it worship?

From a tree branch above —with thoughts of his own,
a Blue Jay swooped down to stand on the stone
and to pin the fly inescapably under a toe.
The fly lamented of the lost opportunity of reproduction
and of sipping sweet drinks shared with Humans.
Absent of murderous thoughts or the repercussions of killing,
with an open mouthed lunge
the pointed, barbed tongue unceremoniously stabbed the fly,
mashed it in the maw and swallowed it down.
Unabashedly, the avian alto sang of warm sun and tasty snacks.

May a Blue Jay whistle above your grave
to let you know spring has returned,
and that the flies got nothing.

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