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3 Poems by Dave Serrette



I.

Fill my belly with the arsenic and old lace.

Let me carry you down the lane

To the field where the flowers fled

After the warm spring rain.


I'll put my head against the old rocks

And whisper an old song to you

Lay we still all through this night

And awaken fresh with golden dew.


Tops and toys spin round marbles in dirt -

In circles drawn with brittle sticks

Against the meridian we tried to find But what is left to build with crumbled bricks?

Find me - I beg you - tomorrow's morning

Before you've boarded that creeping train

And read me sweet words from magazines

That soak down deep in sleeping veins.




II.

Raise high the tumblers until we tumble down

From our waterbeds of barley and of rye.


Those glass keys shall unlock the world

And tumble it smooth as silken skin Of the arms and elbows that touch the table.


Raise the cherry blossom to my lips -

That they may find the sunken gold Beneath the waves and lace that try to hide

My never ending want of you.



III.

All of the old ways are gone now

Buried six feet down

In an old apple crate and wrapped in muslin

With the dead dog I put there last year.


Don't cry, not now nor ever again

Open your nostrils thick

And breathe in the smell of the dirt Held by the chicken scratch that took root.


Burn the old clothes now

And bed sheets soaked in sweat and vacancy

And send the plague beyond

Near where we both know I belong.


Near enough still is want

Just beyond thickets of need

And let the rain water the crops

That in time will be cut and dried.


Drive on in that phaeton

Let it be pulled by the geldings

Who wrap us in the twine that captures

Everything we wish would fall away.

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