Danish Requiem

To be or not to be / the crumbler of the cornerstone / that is the question

in the boughs of a backroads cemetery. Epitaph dripping with dew

or the sky’s tears and the single rose in bloom ’til November is now

drowning / a woman’s back bobs against the surface of Oresund

saltwaters. Hear me: though this be madness, yet there is method

in’t. Last year this time the joys of Vitamin D leeched from our skin and the youthful

lime reversed into icy paint on the leaves / in the canvas of my mind I portrayed

the Reaper as mere fantasy / the ghost of Kronberg Slot’s king washed into oblivion

by those and their Viking blood so roiling with temptation. It takes a destined

perpetrator to commit an atrocity without a weapon / to whirl the rationale of reason /

when I lose myself in the remnants of photo galleries and gifted jewelry I see Hamlet

choking on the carpetwalk. I must be cruel only to be kind / my first poem was of hate

or a hereafter of the life we left / thus bad begins, and worse remains behind /

the bustling of Copenhagen can forgive though what I wouldn’t give to absorb that noble

lady’s voice before water clogged her throat. She is a green girl / was a greedy girl / yet

the liquid of nature preserves her. If I am Hamlet / rotten boar and brute / can I call you Ophelia?