Visiting Home :: Death Drive

I am standing in a verdure
with tombstones and flora.

My body is a match: burning
and burning. It does not go out.

I have not felt anything
for a long time.

But now I am standing in my mother’s
home. In the attic where secrets

sleep. I paw through cellophane
and black plastics. The 70s pornos

and trinkets of the dead. My brother’s
BREAK IN CASE OF EMERGENCY

cigarette. His ashes, somewhere else.
The boxes are stacked in disorder.

Now I am at the Barber Shop. I cannot speak,
the men with their blades look like surgeons

as they curve the necks of men who look
unlike me. One man whistles, muting

the second note again, and again.