We Found Him in the Garden, II

I found him in the garden
eyes shriveled, crisp, and tanned,
the entrails hanging from his bones
like tattered rubber-bands.

Much of him was decomposed,
with parts strewn here and there,
half-buried in the gravel drive
and matted in his hair,

and yet I heard him whisper
through his stridorous gasps for air.

“I cannot die,”
he said at last,

“they will not let me in.
I've tried both gates a thousand times.

I know no good nor sin.”

At this, I reeled in horror,
noticed then a cracked, red mud:
his arms both squirmed, bound by the spots
where sun had cooked his blood.

“How could this be?” I thought aloud,
and peeled him from his tomb.

I carted him as best I could
into the drawing-room.

[Outside, on rocks where he had been,
were bits of skin and grume.]

In seven days, I sat awake,
constructing his new limbs
from items in my closets and
reconstituted tin.

His joints, I shaped from flattened cans,
his arms a broom's old handle,
his legs half-carved from baseball bats,
his feet nailed into sandals.

And after he re-learned to walk,
he claimed he would perform
the story of that bitter end
that left him now deformed.




He pulled some sinews from his sides,
and stretched them straight as wire,
and holding out his other hand
he plucked them like a lyre.

“I was a poet,”
he began,

“you'd know my name quite well.
There wasn't but a single tale
I wasn't known to tell.

“In time, I learned the instruments,
converting rhymes to lyrics--
a troubadour of comedies
romantic and satiric.

“Of tragedies, I could exhale,
a single breath of air
that filled some with a resonance
that they would die right there!

“But in so doing, I admit,
my soul grew truly callous.
I knew of good in song alone,
found poetry in malice.

“I never spoke a single word
that wasn't from another,
repurposed, though it was, for stage,
it left my conscience smothered.

“For every minute that had passed
was spent on my creation,
and not a minute truly lived
outside of that dictation.

“My plays, they told in perfect form
of love and death and health,
And if one were to judge them, they
would sentence Life itself.

“What verdict can you give a mirror?
What punishment or privilege,
When even Adam could not pass
for such a standard visage?

“And then one day,
I had a dream
I'd fallen out of bed,

“I fell for several stories, then
I screamed,
and woke up dead.

“In agony, I spent a decade
barely in the living,
forever wandering amongst
those worlds unforgiving.

“If only I had done ONE DEED!
If I performed but one!
I'd never spend a single day
left searing in the sun.

“ONE DEED!
ONE DEED!
That's all it took!
That all I had to do!

“And so,
with my whole tale complete,
I now must turn to you.

“You'll find your key
is missing from
your writing desk's old drawer,

“and here's a simple means to check:
you'll note I've locked the door!

“I've rotted for some ten-odd years!
I crave a wicked deed.
I'll excise your head
with sharpened bones
and drink from where you bleed!

“And just like me, your corpse will sit,
and you will NEVER LEAVE!

“How's THAT?! WHAT OF MY SPIRIT NOW?!
He cried triumphantly.
I'LL DECAPITATE MY ONLY GOD
IN CRAWLING ECSTACY!"




And so I took his legs again
and beat him with his knees.