Showing posts with label Letting Sleeping Dogs Lie - Dead Ones Too. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Letting Sleeping Dogs Lie - Dead Ones Too. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Catcalls from the Coffin



You must know
when ghosts jingle loose change in their pockets,
and it sounds like Heaven’s bells,
it’s really just an old thought in a dirty shirt
doused in Dolce & Gabbana to mask the death wretch.

And yet, it sends you
right back there
in those moments of what
you don’t want to be.

You leave things behind,
but ghosts,
they return
in a stranger’s hands,

mannerisms,
mouth, hair.

It seems you get pulled back
so easy.
A bad day, not enough sleep,
and you are there
holding hands with the haunts
playing ‘Ring Around the Rosie’
or singing don’t need ‘Nothin’ But a Good Time’
by Poison,

and it is, but it’s catchy,
and you start to want them back—
laughing, like the tune meant anything good.

You’ve outgrown them,
yes,
like those jeans you wore
—back when.
But they’re familiar
and that is comforting
when you don’t know what comes next.

Until
you realize they really are too small
to fit your
Grown Up Responsible Life.
The one where it’s not just you anymore
and you know it.

Of course you do,
you’ve earned it,
every
day
by mud sucking
and light swigging
day.
You can point to every scar,
stretch mark,
every smoky kohl black eyeliner pillow smear.

You’ve fought in too many wars,
sacrificed too much to get here.
Scraped and scrapped
and dug the hell out of your pride when
you had to.
You’re that much bigger now
for all that journeying.

But Oh to try them on again,
for just a few minutes—
gazing at yourself in the mirrored
hall of yesteryear
pretending you’d still look good
in it.


Copyright © 2013 Jennifer Wagner

I'm linking up to the dVerse Poets Pub for OpenLinkNight...the doors opened yesterday but they haven't closed yet so I am sliding on in to join the party!