FOUNTAINS & FUNERALS
The following is poem number 1 of 2009′s NaPoWriMo – 30 poems in 30 days during the month of April. The original prompt was, “Can you start early, I leave for the funeral soon?”
FOUNTAINS & FUNERALS
Burrett at the end of the bar was the one
who lost a chunck of tongue
when he was a kid, not from a bite
but a freak accident he never talked about,
and when he did you didn’t know
what he was saying, like how
he went on and on about fountains
and you swore he was saying funerals,
so when he was thirsty or showing you
pictures from a trip he and his wife took
you were sure he wanted to die.
The kind of guy who peeked down
womens’ shirts at parties when people
were merry and drunk, he lost friends
trying to talk his way out of things he never said –
his last hope was the cheap laughs he got
pouring hot sauce on the stump of flesh
that barely slapped the backs of his teeth,
winning fives and tens every time
someone said he couldn’t hold fire
straight to the lump, and when he did
people asked for more, longer, a larger flame
until his whole face went up, the burns
too much to deal with, Burrett’s body
gave out under the weight of his mind
and died. We didn’t have much to say
around his grave, hugged and laughed
about the lug, remembered he had a thing
for fountains, at least that’s what we thought.
