At Poe's Grave

Employee Appreciation Day:

Once a year we gather here,

librarians, come to be appreciated

by the dead I guess

and a dean descended from higher learning

to serve his servants bloody beef and cupcakes

in the church adjoining this,

your junk food-covered grave.

One block away

we've walked from work

to hear our entertainment: On bass,

washed-up hippies playing pan pipe

versions of age-old diva Escapades

take you on a journey through the fall days of a critical world.

Now goth kids stand mistaken

by your grandfather’s grave

licking their razorblade scars,

invoking anarchist mantras,

half-expecting some chance wedding

of werewolf and tarantula. 

O can’t you hear it, mustache man? 

Is that your spirit in the manhole steam?

Have you heard how slot machines

can cut your debts in half?

The army will take you back now. If nothing else,

the journals fill with sanguine tales—

babies born inside out, the man who grew a second tongue.

Sorry, still no cure for congestion of the brain

but pills and things you tried:

Start saying weird shit to people.

Point to the cherubims and say

“Dude, check out those nude little dudes,”

and watch how professional eyes

grow wide as freaked apes, saying

You’ve got the wrong place,

go out on Lexington, go join the crack addicts;

they dance like flamingoes all day at the market.

It’s tempting, but hey,

we all need a paycheck,

so I stick til the end,

the last one still expecting more

than a case of e. coli and a belly of confections.

Even my eyelash parasites flee

cuz the charm of guessing con men

from the destitute has gotten to be old,

and I never read my tickets when I play for lottery gold.

Tell me if nervous laughter is drifting over El Dorado now. 

You correct the ghosts.

I’ll conform.