Beans and Bread

If we sit and talk of beans and bread,
death without hesitation,
will you remember me, Joseph,
radio-electric, standing in cold
drum-apple rain?

These things will die
in our silver-water ears,
eat piano colors before they
reach our sputtering eyes;
they are vaseline covered mouths,
snap-necked and blue.

This day is scribbled browns,
yellow leaves porch-dead,
velvet lined bird throats;
still, we refuse to speak.

First appeared in Lily Literary Review, Jan. 2006

Michael Paul Ladanyi

Almost Sounds

Alone, this dada-ism room is empty,
4 hazel shades of wood and glass.
Blood flows crooked down
the muted TV,
falls like eyeless warbirds,
yellow in red November fields.

I want to be a dead brother,
aluminum-limbed and vacant,
finger-blue to fit inside this room
like sharp machines canning pears,
silent/open/mouth/scream mechanical dogma.

The black cordless phone,
the one with the answering-machine-woman-voice
that almost sounds human,
has not pop-rang in days,
mocks the table we once laid
against in good sex.

Michael Paul Ladanyi