Of what I have to offer

you find only the suffering

worth anything,

and only enough

to make it a little less.


 

If I could take just one breath

I could handle this,

but I'm already under water.


 

I'm afflicted

with the name of a disease.


What a fast disease!

And they only offer me

what slow cures!



 

Smokesignalling for rescue

the stick tossed from the fire

points desperately toward shore.



 

Swaybacks

with such sad eyes

you think there's nothing

holding them up

but the leather

they're turning into.



 

At last I'm getting

some of it back,

frying the trout

that ate a mosquitoful

of my blood.


 

they think

I'm wasting time too,

watching them chase

the mechanical rabbit


 

like a fish on the line

I feel the world

distantly



 

In a thousand years

you will also

be in a museum

and people will walk past you,

smoking.


 

weaving one another's

wrong sides,

the tapestry between us



 

and at last

the nimble one's bound


into his complicated

twisting stitch
 

Complete Poems

I am emersonj at gmail dot com.

Original materials copyright John J Emerson

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