second of november
the day of the dead
and i nibbled one of your coconut balls
then sat on the verandah slurping tea
and looking through the binoculars for some
birdlike revelation on the wing.
in mexico those black scavengers called los zopilotes
that you once told me about
might be soaring overhead

last night i got up at midnight for a pee
and felt sympathy for saint aquinas who thought up
ten proofs for the existence of god
whereas all i had to do to believe in you was
get up for a pee after midnight on the day of the dead

it is the day of the dead today and last night
i swallowed ghostly-pale ale and it ran warm
straight out of my eyes, my cheeks awash in a mudslide
of cloy i lay on my bed with octavio beside me
on my pillow where i could smell sunstone until
the world stopped landsliding

and this morning i ate the sweet ball of chocolate
and now my mouth feels crazy and my forehead like
it is made of clean glass and maybe you could see
the workings inside if you were here and not dead.

and my eye-sockets are empty-seeming like
the candy skulls they sell on el diá de los muertos and
i was thinking walking over the bridge that
there are some things you can’t escape and for most
of them you are anaesthetised and for some few you would
have to have been in a coma to avoid them.
and i was thinking of how the indians out back of town in
their fields are forced to grow opium and marijuana
just so people on the other side of a place called realidad
can either face or avoid the inevitable.

it is the day of the dead in mexico and the people call
salga! salga! and on janitzio island a fisherman’s wife is chanting
and the grave of a dead man is strewn with marigold petals and
candles are lit on top of the mounds but you in your typical meanness
have left no mound.
remember how you said to me once that if to lapidate means
to kill by stoning, does that mean that to dilapidate means
to kill by removing stones?
when my vision slides down from the window in my forehead
to the empty sockets behind my eyes i will not be stoned
any more. i will be dilapidated.
and it will still be the second of november,
the day of the dead.