Somewhere in the lots of Forest Lawn Cemetery 
your ribs are disintegrating to inscrutable grey
dust. It’s cold in your coffin of black shellac, our satin 
carton, our airless island of no escape. The trees
keep weeping and we’ve got work to do. Houdini 
with his winched pirouettes won’t wriggle past these
terminal locks. Who puts keyholes in coffins, anyway?
I want to burgle the dead. You’ve got trick jewels and I know it.
But my eyes without light have no clue. I’m on a trail 
and the crimes are green, bloody, lucrative. Manly, 
mainly. On paper—lapidary when exhumed. The mined
shaft always shows. Glow, I wish I could, and have cooked 
you something nice before you died. I don’t know
your favorites, but I could guess, feed myself into boots 
of hounds-tooth and imagine steamed puddings
(you were English) some tapas of braised tongue
with spiced aioli (a part of you, Spain) drips of absinthe 
for dessert—our sleep of choice when the dream’s too 
live and I’m still here, under glass, tramping weeds        
from upside-down, kicking dead sidewalks, the grass 
you keep sighing under in my elementary mind.