Dedicated to the Death of Wayne Fenton

He was short in the morning
as the evening
while the light grew longer with age.
Mr. Fenton grabs his guitar and sings
for his four children and long haired wife.
Four women surround him with eight
green blue eyes.
Maybe they’ll sing together, but
Mr. Fenton likes to sing alone
and we all like to watch him sing.

Mr. Fenton woke each day
feeling the currents in his home as a pretense to earth’s pulse.
He could take part in the daily breathe. But

Mr. Fenton saved the world
that drew him beneath its sand.
But Mr. Fenton could never save the world
that would never save him.

In the mornings Mr. Fenton
would grab needle and thread.
With his hands he’d mend broken minds
while recording it down with a ballpoint pen.

In the evening Mr. Fenton
found it back into his bed,
but beneath the kitchen lay
the psychologist’s den.

Everyone morning Mr. Fenton
stayed the same height.
With his guitar he filled eight rooms
using only one inarticulate heart.

In the afternoons
Mr. Fenton
picks up his sharpest nails,
his grandfather’s hammer,
drives to his local office.
With his hands, Mr. Fenton,
would repair leaky children
by banging together heirlooms of sustenance.

Lazy on Sundays
Mr. Fenton
would walk and sing throughout the house
serenading three ginger haired daughters,
two of which kept growing higher
while Mr. Fenton stayed quite the same.

And in the afternoons
Mr. Fenton
would find some gauze and tape,
maybe a little rubbing alcohol
and then
gingerly
clean up bloodless wounds
leftover from consequence
while diverting arrows with a shield made from compassion.

But Mr. Fenton found the wall
that is the floor
But Mr. Fenton saved the world
while the world would never save him at all.

By that afternoon
Mr. Fenton
could not find his tools
or his hands
because Mr. Fenton saved the world
that refused to find him.

That afternoon the hammer was burnt.
We tore up all the thread
Someone bent the nails
Everything unglued
and all threads unwound themselves
into a fragmentation made with entropy and silence.






Written 9/4/06, Dr. Fenton died on 9/3/06