graham isaac

Watching Films About Death

on the corner of Holly and Cornwall you look
tall and old as you'll ever be; ceased aging under
clouds that look like rocks.

you grin wrinkled, call me "chief," stopping in your
faded coat drifting long enough to tell me you're
on your way to the library to pick up films about death;
nature documentaries on beetles, meerkats,

laugh at the morbidity or at least my reaction to it, raise
an eyebrow, grin like I've got no secrets and you've
found the cure for aging; sighing at bodies on TV screens
nature and entropy and humor and pathos

At home I pull blinds to block sky that looks
like gravel, file through stacks of VHS and DVDs
lots of nostalgia, dark comedy, horror. Jokes with blood
in them. I pull the shades, flick off the lamp

drift in and out of sleep to sneering lips and
the chatter of gunfire.


Forward Thinking

I'm burning down a forest
and erecting a giant ball-pit
Chuck E Cheese style, but with
more pizza and less urine.

the animals can play there, too
I don't get precious about who's
invited to this year-long birthday
party as long as everybody

is having a fun, throwing
multi-colored balls up in the air
at all times, screaming and laughing,
no one stuck in the tubes.

the bigger animals will have to
wait their turns; you can't
have bears and foxes sharing
a slide, from there on out

it gets far too Aesopian,
and the reason I'm having it
in the forest is the forest was
there and I'd already drained

the pond for the mud-wrestling
arena and adult video arcade and
I wanted to give back to the kids
and really, you can't stop progress.