Marie One

As mayor of Starkopolis 

and councilman of Bleaktown, 

I do hereby dedicate the key

to the city to one Marie. 

To one Marie whose last name is Coma. 

In her stead for two years to have lived in cognitive dream. 

Why the poems draw what they chose from me

from their whim of passing through me

and so often come out the other side

as nothing anyone would want to live through, 

I don't know. 

But not knowing 

how and what they do is largely a condition of the thing. 

Gratitude at being spared, to be weighted

requires you be bound by tiny hooks

to the rolling over of disaster and cruel will

that spared you, but is always prepared to take you. 

I'm glad it didn't have reason to

yet, so I had a chance to meet you. Not once

have I heard you mention any sparing. 

What's there, what Starktown and Bleakopolis

grew out of, their skylines jagged

as stylishly knocked out teeth, doesn't

   give itself away or receive

according to the flinch of some moral analysis. 

Nothing should be made good or necessary, you say,

if it's already so much nature making the rounds. 

From me to you, to you to anything

that contains or compares or surrounds.