Nocturnal Undertaker

  by Jason Huskey © 2007

His hands, rigid, no one sees his face,

As the wandering eye sees no more.

When a future fell buried,

Blacken the night.

 

Fortunate fools ponder aimlessly

As mountains pout out fog, and we

Slide slowly down the ranks of treetops.

Blacken the night.

 

As darkness descends and man

Knows nothing more than what he

Allows, nocturnal undertaker marches on.

Blacken the night.

 

Funeral fountain marching procession as

A patriot pounds the sky, and as the

Nocturnal undertaker marches forward,

Blacken the night.

Our Friend, the Chosen

by Jason Huskey © 2007

We dumped her ashes into the Willamette,

the sand of her soul wading below the crystal—

the lip of her Ziploc urn trembling

as she tumbled into the lake,

the memories of a first fish, first kiss, first child,

 

bubbling up with her final droplets of air.

We paused to sigh and pray as she'd have us,

hearing a whisper come up the shore,

begging us to remove our shoes

and join her at the bottom of the lake.

 

The sky trumpeted with broken cymbals.

The evergreens groaned like haunted garrets.

We fell knee-deep into the slip of algae,

eyes weeping December and the soured water.

The taste of her presence burned acid rings

 

into the black of our tongues. Our bodies

blistered to the icy flow of sucker fish

and Sandra's final grasp, the ginger tug

at our shivering legs, peach nails breaking

the purple numbness of our thin flesh.

 

The froth of the lake browned with our tiny waves,

licking at our straining pupils going under, until finally,

we shattered in the sound of broken water, a silver shockwave

cutting her to rest in wait like we did that night.

Eyes nervous to the snare of yellow fear.