Turning Over in Their Graves
i wonder
how
the buried dead are turning
over
how do they do that?
do they get help?
someone must be down there with them
pushing them over
so they can
turn over in their graves
that would be my kind of job
dark
even keeled
away from the skeeters
able to visit all the great people
who died and need flipping over
like pancakes inside the earth
like pork roasts who need basting
like chickens on a spit
wait
this now sounds too much like a job at Piggly Wiggly
The Nymph of the Dragonfly
I look for my reflection in the shallows along the river.
Luckily I am not there. I am below visiting a catfish.
I am pretending to wave like the fronds of tall water plants
and some poor drowned fool with his pants around his knees
sees me and begins waving except for his hollow eyes.
Those hungry eyes which want to consume me.
Beneath a rock I find the nymph of the dragonfly
I poke him gently to see if he's alive or just a shell.
Now disturbed he farts water and without moving a limb
he jets forward,
so I try the same,
except mine rise in bubbles
to the magical surface of the calm water, which is
always pulling me up, into the air of lumbersome world.
Upon that surface above me I finally see my own eyes reflected.
Staring back at me from the oily mirrored surface is a child's sheer glee,
Floating,
weightless,
in love with this simple private pleasure of being born a dragonfly.
Charles Goldman was great friends with now legendary Ted Berrigan. One collaboration of his can be found in Jim Carroll's "Living At The Movies," and is called "Cosmopolitan Life," written with Bruce Wolmer and Mr. Carroll. Currently he resides in Milwaukee, WI. His chapbook "NO FEAR" is forthcoming November 2010 from Virgogray Press.
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