Three Poems

The Diarist

Your eyes were met with a yellow liquid,
not God’s dew.
Your head scrapes the ceiling,
which resembles the release of steam
from a whistle.
Your rucksack was stuffed with a daydream
stolen from a classmate,
barely a virgin.
I had just got back from work,
washed off the pollen in the pond,
sat down for dinner.
Well, I sighed towards dinner.
You’re a fool.
That’s all I can say after looking at you.
A gutter and a fool.
Instead of coffee in the morning I drink vodka, two glasses.
I thought that this was the manifestation
of a deeper, older age.
But I was 16.
The smell of my unhatched body
in the neutral smell of my grandfather’s home,
who survived starvation because he netted horseheads
from the rotten stream of the slaughterhouse
and digested them.



37 Years

I, too, laugh at my 2 batteries,
2 power banks,
2 jump packs,
2 internet boxes,
2 inverters,
3 battery chargers,
gas generator,
propane and firewood.
The equipment that has worked intensively for 37 years
but required so little care
that even I forgot how to care for it.
I guess that I was destined
to make a loop the size of 37 years.
This circle I have drawn for you has an area.
First, I want the occupants to leave.
And then…
then you can check on the news from behind the parebrick.
If you want to.
But I’m not sure my life will be long enough to want to.



Reincarnation

A cat walks around the house, pain in the leg
limpin’
yet very proud of himself.
Cat blows with passion his wool
O,
takes his own leg with two hands
like, eats it,
poo-poos in a bowl.
A hat may come out.
Four times I’ve been through this.
Pit bull, shepherd dog, retriever…
They say, you’re lazy like a dog
and then you die
like a pipe on a ripe car.
O how teeth break as the world passes by.
Rear teeth?
I only expect a set-up from them.
Broke a rear tooth on sticked chicken,
very focused and tensely sucked.
Ha, of course.
I put the fuck slowly in my mouth,
chewed,
chewed,
but the infection was too much.
I am the painter
who hangs his empty brew bottles
on his wife’s toes
as she sleeps.

____
Zan de Parry wrote Cold Dogs (The Song Cave) and Cop an Emulator (Topos Press). He lives in Ypsilanti.