A Dead Letter Picks Up Its Stone Bed and Talks

Departed poems in a gray post-dated heaven clatter wings together like hens in a jailers coop. Words never die, they bury themselves in heaps of dry leaves, distant laughter scatters the sadly said. Muse-makers wear plastic rainhats that flutter like bats in the sunlight. Words have to be tied together or they sink alone in an empty fish bowl. Japanese girls in designer Nike's skip over words completely and we all hear. Silk flowers in China teacups sail a deep blue ink. The poets speak in tie-dyed riddles, in dribbles between the loosely connected. Atop a mountain, goats bray, love-sick donkeys harken with their heavy hearts. Legions of cock-hatted rhymers are born again to confuse the world with their simplistic sounds. Writing for all the long dead letters is an art for baby fingers and painted opera singers. Undertakers gather; their electronic ankle-beepers sing within freshly dug sonnets and odes. The deceased travel on, spinning a gray language, they are silk moths weaving tinsel rainbows that by chance speak words still wet from closed lips.