Cowsong

Guide me into the depths,
where the lack of oxygen intercepts
the thing no human accepts.
Yet here I am, alive: a joke
the wind might contrive.
Underneath the beat of your blood,
feet in the stars, face in the mud.
I can hear your brains beat
and your heart thud.
I see your tendered legality,
your surrendered hospitality.
It leaves me lost yet calls to me.
The borders crossed,
thanks for the liberty.
I hold my heart in place.
Allow me to reveal it
to your face.

—Max Ferguson

Yellow Touchings

Before you retire
from this realm of delight,
you bask for one last time
in the tenderness of the spotlight.
As you stare up at the stars,
where you came from, and back down
into the ocean of adoring sighs,
you wipe the pride and joy
from bloodshot eyes, soaking up
all the love and reflected glory
from the thousands who have lived
their own stories through you,
and the thousands more
who will relive it on pay-per-view.
Down through the years, your sorrow
and elation have been magnified
at every station. Fame is love,
but the price is steep,
and a well-spent life runs deep.

—John Tottenham