A new edit of the most recent post, modified during my odyssey in Los Angeles. This is, I feel, a less distracting condensation of my theme. Also, a note: the real title is the one above THIS version. Sometimes, having a "G" next to the "H" on the keyboard can be such a bother. I almost wish it were the former title--better consonance--but we would, alas, lose the allusion and lapse into confusion.


GRANDPA HERLEWS

I smell the barbaric clay
and flay the soil but
when I rub my eyes the dirt
makes me cry—goddammit
when I toil in your hoary garden (once-mannered, once-young, goddammit)
I churn up the rusty taste
of your cuirass; of
the sweet scarf you kept folded
in your back pocket;

scraps of your chest—
spackled in mold (bright black flecks
on your lungs),
impaled on the spear invisible.
goddammit.

my lips and nose crush
into the gravel—I shall
eat the earth bellied over you; I shall
chew to your dark wet womb and
gnaw away the strap of decay. I shall, goddammit,
lift you up slick and new-skinned.
every callus renewed.

but of these thick stone glades,
which stone is yours? in the hot mist
you are obscured, and I hear the distant
thump of hooves.
I cannot find the broken lance, nor
the one who thrust it in.
So
I cannot pluck it out.