Grief is the silence at the middle of the bus.
Each seat is seeped with Homo. Why
do I feel so alone? My home has been made
a maze of construction workers and warning signs.
I have been signposted to nowhere, then onto
this bus. Grief is the marble
that rolls around in each of our skulls.
We push rocks up steep hills, each caught
in their own prison. This poem is a white space
and in the middle, this bus. Grief
is what was suffused into the beams
the wrecking ball has smashed into smithereens.
Grief is the cut tongue of a magpie.
I am always on the hunt
for shiny things, but searching
through the wreckage, I come up with only trash.
Trash is what came out of my mouth, they said.
My voice a broken record. Grief is like playing
a broken record or looking at yourself in a cracked
mirror. The mirror of myself reflects
like a bus window: scribbled. Grief is the
twitching tongue of Philomela
lying prostrate on the guest room floor.
Mouths opening and closing like hooked carp.
I am better now, thanks to the drugs:
still, years in the woods.
Grief is the silence at the middle of the bus
headed for Cemetery. The bus driver
caressing his horn like a lover. The rest
of us wondering what to make of it all.