Henry’s Suicide

I thought of this the other night while having insomnia. Had to dumb the formatting down for the sake of WordPress, but you get the idea.

Henry’s Suicide

Beard thatched and pitchforked,
wet eyes like a whipped dog’s, when he’d read
he’d be drunk and would take you on his back
flying through dim-lit halls of Chinese
medicine and bulletcases and childhood fear,

along rivers of spawning salmon and pools
of bog filling with light,
circling the Bodhi tree, low comedy
water-slugs chewing roots, the flower raving,
a blue-gray song,
the dodging of dread shapes and mosquito
swarms and TV antennae.

Stopping for a quick nip of frozen
daiquiri at some strip club
or pastor’s house in Roswell or Nairobi,
and upward you’d go,

two souls clasped and silhouetted
in a pinkish backdrop of scallop shell moon,
gliding over transmission tower wires
and watery-bright streets, plunging
the moist plum tree
mist and descending

invariably onto the Washington
Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis
where he’d let you off his back,
clip his wings. Goodbye, sir, & fare well,
he’d say. And leap,
leaving you to wonder,
like genius always does.