Goodreads
del.icio.us
My god, my god, my god,
there is absolutely no danger
of it ever being
"forgotten."
But there is plenty of danger
in what it is we
choose to
remember
about
it.
My god did we laugh, and laugh as we
just kept drinking and took turns
punching the left over jack-o'-lanterns
as hard as we could, our balled up fists wet,
full of pumpkin meat, string, & seeds.
It started off as a joke, see—
what we would've done
if we'd been on
one of the planes
the terrorists took.
We'd talk to the pumpkin terrorists
who'd hi-jacked our imaginary plane,
talk all kinds of brave & angry shit,
"Yeah? Just you try & make me sit down,
motherfucker, I dare you!" we'd scream,
Or "What was that? Oh, I'm sorry,
I don't hear so good...could you just
come a little closer and...BOOM!"
then we'd smash their pumpkin faces
with everything we had,
the front porch littered with pumpkin bits,
& the harder we hit, the louder we'd laugh,
the better it felt, the more it felt
like justice...
But also, every time, I felt myself
getting closer & closer to weeping,
so I'd swallow it and just laugh and laugh,
until we ran out of jack-o-lanterns.
Then we laughed and laughed
at how stupid we were, punching pumpkins,
our wrists sore, our knuckles swollen...
It was the only sense we
could make of it all.
The far-off thack
of a bolt snap
clanging a cold
aluminum pole,
flag at
half
staff.
The reported miseries worldwide
coupled with a bit of our own
misguided sadness,
that's what
makes poems—
yes, unimaginable horrors
far, far away
from our
comfortable
places.
Hosho McCreesh lives, works, writes, & paints in the gypsum & caliche badlands of the American Southwest—only 3 of which he enjoys.