NewPoetry

Jacob McArthur Mooney

.

The space where you say
“I hate these killings,
and also these killings”

should be endless:
fields, arenas, oceans.
But suddenly to say so

is to squirm beneath a train,
or a friend’s explaining tongue.
We can take complexity

when it also comes with cadence.
Or symmetry and archetype.
Help a homing soul out

and make the martyrs known
as nursery rhymes. I can’t
excuse myself, I can only reposition.

A carved country or a carver’s country:
cast your doubts
and your causations.

There is no calmer thought
than a locked and trusted door.
A room lit such that shadows

cast elective patches
on the walls you’ve hung
with children’s faces. Focus:

the news is not your father.
You can be bereaved and also hated.
But you were called to understand,

not alliterate. You decorous asshole,
don’t you count your dead?
Remember: it’s only gallows humor

if it’s you that’s in the gallows.
Or if you own the gallows.
Or if you own the gallows, but

it’s also you
that’s in them.
……………… Wouldn’t that be weird?

The antidote to mourning
is loneliness, friends.
We take it from each other.