Two old poems

Note: The last few lines of the second poem are supposed to be indented, but the blog format doesn't preserve the tabs I put in. It is bothering the hell out of me but I'm sure it doesn't actually make a damn bit of difference, so I'm just going to leave it as is on the blog.

(untitled…)

The man
that jumped from the plane
right before it hit the ground
still became
smashed brains and bones—
this, we know.

But wouldn’t it have been great
if he emerged from the wreckage
as unscathed as
little boys leaping from wooden docks into
soft, eutrophic lakes—

not for the his sake,
but for the sake of our own
hopeless attempts?

--------------

This is the story of Her life

I strung a cello
with my hair
still rooted in my head.
(I’d watched
my ma repair the strings
to make the dead ol’ cello sing.
Young and mute
and full of hope,
I thought that I could do the same.)
I pressed the bow into my hair and
clumsily, slowly,
moved my elbow like a hinge.
The sound waves
shivered up my hair
and scalloped past my ears
and jiggled in my brain
but that was it.