Two Poems by Bob Holman
(also from Headless Buddha)
PLEASE DON'T DIE YET
On the back of the cereal box
It says to be continued
The cat jumps up on the breakfast table
The crooked painting beckons
Like your next lover
The light bulb pops
The toaster crackles
The phone just won't shut up
All over there is everything
While here sit you still
As the hole in the metal eyepatch
Doctors wear on elastic bands round their foreheads
When I was five, I made my mother promise
To put a teeny tiny headstone on my grave
The easier to push it off
And come back to you
MARRIAGE -- It's a Dirty Little Secret
Elizabeth and I taxied down
to City Hall to get married.
Last year my mother eloped
to Key West with Howard
I hear through the grapevine
my brother Stu is set to marry Ann
whom I've never met.
My sister Amy married Jerry
at a cult ceremony in Kansas
along with 499 other couples.
My other brother Lewis and Steve
had their picture in the paper
as they waited in line to be among
the first gay couples to legally conjoin.
