David W. Landrum

A Reincarnated Friend Swims into my Ken on a Beach in Australia

Jeff, you are that jellyfish
dangling its tentacles, trolling
the sea for bits of food,
for squid to paralyze,
made mostly of water,
ghostly as after you were hit by that car
(which was also after your motorcycle crash
and all the pins they’d put in you
came loose). You fell apart,
drunk, shambling on that road,
you, the best drummer our high school
ever saw, whose rim-shots still
ring in my ears.

Now you vacuum the deep,
working your way
back up the karma scale,
scalped Medusa,
without a body,
floating translucent
in the plankton-clouded warmth
here, near this beach.

Maybe the way you treated girls
or maybe your blasphemies
consigned you to this space,
this niche in reincarnation.
You will wash up on the shore
and melt, then into another form:
a fish perhaps, a seal, a tiny shark,
and then on up.

You are still dangerous. You still
have lots of moves.

 

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