USA

X marks the spot where the body lies in time,

Bloody blotch that fell through the howling air:

By love betrayed, the letter read and burned?

Darling, I'm sorry, can't we just be friends?

By grim phone call at night, the stranger's voice

Muffled through cloth, but harder than a fist?

By dark disease, hidden from family,

But X-rays absolute proof: look, that gray blur-

With antiseptic shrug and surgical smile-

Six months, maybe a year?

Is there a note,

Scrawled like a scream on paper?

I tried! I tried!

I thought it would work. Only myself to blame.

Best years of my life. I still can't figure out

Where it went wrong. Good-bye.

Or a woman's name

Dropped on the pale page like dripping sound,

That one word loud as if it were live blood.

Or an address hinting it would tell all,

That proved his lodge, happy to send a wreath,

A bench of brothers to mourn.

Or a paragraph

Neat as an order book, thought out for days,

A model to be used for the next man

Tagged for that territory, giving the car,

His guns and tackle, to his oldest boy,

And all insurance to his wife (he'd been

Well-covered, naturally ).

Or not one word,

Just silence leering from an empty room

To hint that after liquor, drugs, and girls

He'd given up and let the lesion take him-

Guilt like an old wound groaning with the weather.

Nothing to show the weasel, conscience, snarled

Once before he grabbed it, cage and all,

And jumped into the glittering cage of air?

Nothing: no next room salesman to report

He'd heard a yell, as if one heard the blind

Cyclops bellow in his astonished cave.

But look-The cops are calling, Give 'im air.

Let the poor bastard breathe. He's coming to.

He's tougher than we thought-some broken bones,

Not much for a fall like that, he'll soon be back

Good as ever, one of the boys, to bounce

History on his knee like a bold blonde.