Three Poems
Why The Dead Are So Passive
We honour the dead
by flinging dirt in their faces,
by planting thorny flowers
in their chests.
Like shepherds, we round them
up for cosmetic shearing.
They turn the other cheek
when we slap them,
as if to wake them,
as if to make them sting
for leaving us to the wars
of our mirrors.
We do not understand
what is eating them.
Orphans Adopting Themselves
From our fathers
we inherit feet
from our mothers
long arms
We walk away
always reaching back
Immortality
The thought flowed to my eyes in blood.
There in a crack on the pavement's skull
ran the red life of a little league batter
hugging the black truck wheel to his chest.
I could almost see his final breaths up-flowing
into the deep gasps of purged onlookers.
As I crossed the murderer street to work,
I looked both cluttered ways,
right behind and dead ahead.
Robert S. King has been writing and publishing since the 1970s. His work has appeared in hundreds of magazines, including The Kenyon Review, Southern Poetry Review, Lullwater Review, Chariton Review, Main Street Rag, and others. He is currently Director of FutureCycle Poetry, www.futurecycle.org.