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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

Trash

I throw out bones and shards of glass,
crushed paper and shelled nuts,
journals of birth and death,
pixilated pictures,
scarred eyes.
Remnants of technology,
some in the coffins of their boxes,
misunderstood, misused,
magic to my 12th century intelligence,
garbage that originated in the tropics.
Aluminum cans that sucked up
the energy of a sun to make.

DNA shaken from my hands
and feet and hair,
leaving something called me behind,
and the first animal that ever said a prayer,
unheard and wasted.
Birds that lent their wings to BAR-B-Q,
never having felt the air or flown.
Roses perishing in coffee grounds,
coffee itself leached of caffeine
which made a poem,
wrote a letter of farewell,
and called friends on the phone.

What would someday be discovered
in this pile of fragments,
wasted garlands,
the unpaid bill they send
to the world?
Life, as full as a city
of evaporating light,
stars crushed in salt,
poured on plates,
showing the explorer,
a place that once held songs,
covering rocks with tide
and dreams becoming the sound
of lost, unheard voices.

Published inIndex of all Poems