Philip Seymour Hoffman, with Figurative Language

    Matthew Tuckner

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So many selves stacked on top

of selves, it’s easy to let some drop.

I’ve killed time this way.

 

Schlepping the cargo

through the sprawl

of lantern flowers & dollar bills.

 

Lugging the load across the drawbridge

that creaks like a passage from Lear

when it splits to let the barges pass.

 

It’s true, the mess I made

has a mouth. A flute for a brain.

A deviated septum of the heart.

 

It’s true, I just wanted joy

to fashion itself a body it could corrupt

& burst into smithereens.

 

Joy, it appears, is lazy. Even the Gowanus Canal,

green as leeks, recites the same well-worn

platitudes as it rocks itself to sleep.

 

I think I can, it thinks,

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can

even if it can’t, or won’t.

 

I think I could’ve been a monk in another life,

or a martian, or a butterfly that drinks

the salty tears as they trickle down a turtle’s face.

 

I think I could’ve been something

too true to be true. A beautiful glitch.

The bloated body of a humpback whale

 

washed up in the heart of the Amazon.

A rain of frogs spilling

from a silver sky.