02-27-2014, 10:47 AM
Version 2 (a nod to Milo)
Gone two days, but the skunk
stench sticks to the curb,
splashes of bronze
where road, animal,
and darkness fused
in a driver's headlamps.
When an odor holds
faster than gravestones,
not even a cross makes the dead
more present, wisped into the vents
of bicycle helmets, the cracked
windows of alley traffic.
It takes a block to remove
the film of memory from each breath;
what was inhaled
already a part of the blood
used to fuel the lungs again
to pump the heart once more.
---------------------
V. 1
Gone two days, but the skunk
stench keeps to the curb,
swimming in splashes of bronze
where road, animal,
and darkness fused
in a driver's headlamps.
When an odor holds
faster than gravestones,
not even a cross makes the dead
more present, wisped into the vents
of bicycle helmets, the cracked
windows of alley traffic.
It takes a block to remove
the film of memory from each breath;
what was inhaled
already a part of the blood
used to fuel the lungs again
to pump the heart once more.
Gone two days, but the skunk
stench sticks to the curb,
splashes of bronze
where road, animal,
and darkness fused
in a driver's headlamps.
When an odor holds
faster than gravestones,
not even a cross makes the dead
more present, wisped into the vents
of bicycle helmets, the cracked
windows of alley traffic.
It takes a block to remove
the film of memory from each breath;
what was inhaled
already a part of the blood
used to fuel the lungs again
to pump the heart once more.
---------------------
V. 1
Gone two days, but the skunk
stench keeps to the curb,
swimming in splashes of bronze
where road, animal,
and darkness fused
in a driver's headlamps.
When an odor holds
faster than gravestones,
not even a cross makes the dead
more present, wisped into the vents
of bicycle helmets, the cracked
windows of alley traffic.
It takes a block to remove
the film of memory from each breath;
what was inhaled
already a part of the blood
used to fuel the lungs again
to pump the heart once more.