the years just crocuses’
consequent stigmas yeah that’s
a slim jim worth
snapping into life at a moment’s
notice as if undearth it
all a strained voice were to whisper
the truth into a span of
cloth wet with the leakings
of a functioning human
body and its sister dust now just
try to put those flowers where
they belong—in the earth in
the imprint on the table on the
tree limb in the vase on the grave in
the instant in the clutch of
celebrant hands—candidate,
graduate, mother, clown, partner,
bereaved, host, one who
finishes or begins again—
honey bees druggedly sip and lug and
spew up essences into the sticky
orifices that spume the gauged future