Perry Thompson - Two Poems

The old man who's my
neighbor draws a mouthful
of tobacco from the curved
stem of his pipe and that curve
cools the smoke for him.   He smiles
at me and the puff is beautiful
around his head like a passing aura.

I think of my old mother in her favorite
chair and laugh out loud at the
idea of molecules holding her together
for these 97 years.  She was once a little
girl who kissed a boy for the first time
at school's end.

I'm amazed that distance equals
rate times time and am
dumb-struck by the idea
of the square root of minus one.

I know the angels fall every last one of them
with a thud that makes me look under the bed
and close the closet door before I can get to sleep.
I know children, their chests bitten through
by war, who rage on like red Mississippis.

I cling to the starry night when she told me
she'd love me forever, put her mouth on my penis
and then kissed my mouth with her tongue.
Our molecules were a fumbling grace as we
laughed out loud at our beautiful distance from each other.

I cling without shame to my friends
whom I fear will go away when I do
something unforgivable for I'm filled
with unforgivable things.
I hug close two great loves in my life
and whisper I love you hoping they
know what I mean when I don't myself.

Fear is that old old angel over there in our very
living room, ignoring us and reading a book (I think
it's one of my favorite books by Stephen King!)
and sitting in a rocker that's rocking and rocking and rocking.
And I suddenly know he's old enough to be
my great grandfather but he's really my son.

And the old fart looks just like me!

No longer burned by passion's
constant fire, he rests in shallow
graves from Warsaw to Johnnesburg.

Solitude seduced by fear kept him
bare and horror found him hanging
lean and fine on a tree of neon.

Smooth and blank confession's page
framed the last hours of youth,
notes unsigned by the dead.

Clothing torn and soaked in blood
forms the Word from a life in flames,
notes penned by the dead for us.

Christian Generals nodding in the rooms
pin their words to a dead man's shirt.
They broke the pianist's fingers one by one.