Elegy for a Broken Machine: Poems

Elegy for a Broken MachineMy father was tryingto fix somethingand I sat there just watching,like I used to,whenever somethingwent wrong.I kept asking where he’d been,until he put down a wrenchand said Listen:dying’s just somethingthat happens sometimes.Who knowswhere that kind of dream comes from?Why some thingsvanish, and somejust keep going forever?Like that look on his facewhen he’d stare off at somethingI could never make outin the murky garage,his ear pressedto whatever it wasthat had died—his eyes listening for somethingso deep inside it, I thoughteven the silence,if you listened,meant something.***** Old LoveYou, lovely beyond all lovely, whoI’ve loved since Ifirst looked intoyour blue beyond blue eyes,are no longeranywhere on earththe girl these wordscall out to,though never, since,have I not beena darkening woodshe walks through. *****  The GuitarIt came with those scratchesfrom all their belt buckles,palm-dark with their sweatlike the stock of a gun:an arc of pickmarks cutclear through the lacquerwhere all the players before meonce strummed—oncethumbed these same latcheswhere it sleeps in green velvet.Once sang, as I sing, the old songs.There’s no end, there’s no endto this world, everlasting.We crumble to dust in its arms.