Monday Night Deconstruction

A clandestine group
Of Derrida scholars
Meets almost every Monday
Night in the Methodist Church
Basement among stacks of Bibles
Filled with illustrated scenes
And cardboard boxes
Labeled "Nativity" or "Lights."

Over fruit-punch and oatmeal cookies
You can hear

"nothing but text"
"we are not outside"
"we are not inside"

One or two will stay
Late after the meeting
And snacks to help clean up crumbs
With the janitor.
And then continue arguing
At the edge of the dark lot.

Here, a barely audible

"Sous rature"

An abrupt

"Differ'ance"

And then it's over.
There is hope that next week
Truth will reveal itself
To this semi-circle
Of nervous laughter.

10.16.98

I'm letting the canyons wait for me,
While I prepare this life on paper.
I'm forgetting how to solve square roots
With pencils and roses.
When I walk, I'm reliving a blue, plastic
Swimming pool after dinner.
And searching the brick street for my
Bike's lost banana-seat.
I'm singing the National Anthem as a blind man, so that I don't have to carry my
Lunch in a green box of animal facts.
In my past is an Easter play with glitter on its face.
The rest of them are carrying babies through the screen doors of childhood, while I watch the pedophiles crash their delivery trucks.
And still,
I'm a bridge
supported by yellow leaves.

Lightning Bugs

Tonight during our
evening walk, my wife
and I passed a field of cut,
brown hay.

What seemed like a thousand
lightning bugs were floating
above the field.

"Why do they light up
like that?" she asked.
It has something
to do with mating,
I think, I tell her.

I used to love running
around at dusk collecting
lightning bugs, I go on to say.

"You don't even want to
know what we did,"
she says.

"We wanted to scare
the girl down the road,
so my sister and I
would kill them and rub
their light under
our eyes like warpaint."

Oh, I say and continue
walking home.

Little did she know that
later, I would stay
awake all night
watching for her
eyes to glow.