Game Show

I think I know what death is
you say, but things that seem dead are not dead
in the morning, or in springtime. Springtime
happens more often than you
would expect. It happens at least
once a year. It flutters its name:
Narcissus. The Earth is lust after all
Admire my boulders. Climb my mountains
Settle in my trees. Bathe in my cavities. Hover above me
The Earth has more experience in lust than we ever will
Look at all the babies she had: axolotls, for criminy’s sake
In this house, things that seemed dead
are not dead in the morning
the daffodils lift on their stalks
crazed with yellow
my mother in the shadows smokes her final
cigarette never imagining her end
came years ago
In this house, even your weird father is alive again
Look! Women kneel around him, massaging his feet
the flowers in their coiled hair wilting and reviving
seven times, seventy times
Ghosts, I say, —not always spectral
No, you say, I think I’ve figured it out
It’s just the damned zoosia again, and
the cat is still starving. Can’t you help her?
The shadow cat growls under the table
her stomach destroyed
from opiods, just as in life. The lesson
might be: Suffering is long
everyone must get the pain to end
one way, or, yes, the far better way, with life
The cat abruptly rises, grooms
with her cancerous tongue—
If I touch tender on her
somatosensory cortex her tumours shrink
her tongue unsticks from the valley of her jaw
She vanishes anyhow. Is that what you mean?
Sometimes in this game show, you lift a table leg
and it is just a table leg, set improperly, wobbling
but sometimes you move it to
your mouth to discover it’s cake
You say you love me. I say I love you
I want serenity and safety, same as anyone
(the run-on sentence where we are in this together)
I dream you are dead. There’s a light
inside your body. You stand
in the living room for me to read by
Pink snow falls softly on our shoulders
on the feather quilt
insisting springtime, and we hold hands—
or we hold hands, insisting springtime, so
our hair breaks into cherry bloom