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Almost Home
by Howie Good

Wait a minute. This is not my home.

I began much – the whirlwind,
the world whirlwind,
carried me and my work away.

Whose house is this? What street is this?
Hello. Is there anybody in the room?

I can’t sleep. Too dark. . . too light.
I am seeing things you know nothing of.

It isn’t so bad. Just a little dreamy anxiety,
which world you’re really in, that’s all.

Oh look,
see how the cherry blossoms fall mutely.

What does it signify?
How much longer will it last?

Four o’clock. How strange.
So that is time. Strange.

Hold me in your arms.
Time is short. Agony grows.
Hope lessens.

Softly, quite softly.

 

Ungrateful Traitors
by Howie Good

Twenty-seven letters! What is the use?
This subject is too much for me.
Everything has gone wrong, my girl.
The play is finished. The chariots and the horses!
I am not able to explain myself.
Nothing matters. Nothing matters.
Don’t let the awkward squad fire over me.
Don’t let the children forget me.
Don’t sole the dead man’s shoes yet.
Sing to me, if you have the heart.

 

Note: These poems are assembled from death-bed sayings attributed to John Abernethy,Miguel de Cervantes, William Cowper, James M. Barrie, Rupert Brooke, Pope Alexander VI, Ludovico Ariosto, Jacques David, William Cullen Bryant, Draza Mihailovoic, Joseph Pulitzer, Sir Charles Bell, Henry Morton Stanley, Victor Emmanuel II, Hideko Tojo, William Allingham, Warren G. Harding, Stephen Crane, Sir William Parry, Louis B. Mayer, Paul Verlaine, Sir Horace Mann, Irving Thalberg, Louis Agassiz, Robert Burns, Arnold Bennett, Frederic Bastiat, Edmund Clarence Stedman, William Eyton Tooke, and Tommaso Masanieollo. They are part of a series of poems titled “Last Words,” some of which are available at: http://goldwakepress.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/lastwords.pdf.