Untitled (Static Fragments part VI)

I recognize you in the print,
framed and boxed and closeted
to hang unbecoming whispers,

it was always –who?- so it sits
back boxed and closeted. You’re not
really there, you’re behind, but

I know what went on along
the paths through the reeds and sea
oat and sumac. How many burned

out carcasses did we count
for posterity; thieves’ getaway
landfill sculpted from another

man’s sunken treasure. Robert
Moses never met a golden calf he could
not leave his name upon but this

brackish arm meandering a warm
November? It’s a long bus ride and
a longer hoof-it to find your way out

there so no, I’ve yet to make it back.

There Were Warnings

we gnash with a mouthful of broken teeth; eat
each other whole. bellies with no room
for remorse; not instinct, but ingrained, inbred

crushed like statuary amidst unhewn stone,
the gap between what marks the spectrum’s ends.
mottled bleedings inhabit muddied pictures,

otherwise straight lines, any definitive scratched
into lenses; these cameras covered red swirled
on hands, on faces, on everyone: pray

and find solace in the end of the world if
this empire crumbles surely it is the last
and greatest

Bureaucrat As Religious Scribe

it’s an expressionless face in a
three-walled hole of reflection

druids believed that
writing compromised secret

mass long lost to desire,
unresponsive as trained

and memory; for all their work,
only Roman accounts of them

that’s how I imagine him
definitely a him

survived, whatever that’s worth
when I write, my memory

he, who will pass on the orders
to begin the immolation

failed; will the only traces
in fifteen hundred years

any traces of us that we don’t
keep ourselves, gone

of any of this come
back to light as the hand

emperors never light the fire
it would be unconscionable

cuffed stiffly at the desk
producing reports and documentary

but the ashes on an unthinking
lackey’s smooth fingers

satisfied, however, so when the works
of the eternal volunteer elapse

grant a pass in the eyes
of the gods, the state, enduring

without conscious notice the fury
rages inside, demanding to be acknowledged

Untitled (10/9/08)

My friend Sophie knows
all the names for god
even if she says she doesn’t

I don’t believe her
just like I don’t believe
in god. But if

it’s real it probably
doesn’t want, or need, me
to believe

Because how relevant
to its aims
could I possibly be?

Then This Is A Dance, I'm Dancing

I thought I could dance
everyone said
because I had rhythm
I thought I could dance

But all eyes were on me
and I fled the scene
they said I could dance
since I knew how to sing

Alone in my room
I was ready to dance
with two curious knees
just holding me up

I could sing with my feet
if I knew how to dance
and because I had rhythm
be the life of the night

Now all eyes are on me
joints stiff as a line
unbending to will
and the threat of clapped hands

These curious knees
as unsure as first kiss
to chance with these feet
thinking we can all dance

(Book 2, pg. 128)

Something thicker filled the air today than water it was leaves, dry, and apple atmosphere. granny smith. No the next day is cold, wet, without lingering trimmed autumn grass. That’s all been smothered tomorrow into the soles of children’s shoes. They want their games on the wet field, they hate indoor gym class especially the ones with overzealous parents ready to sue over a lopsided game of dodgeball or anything with probabilities of pediatric peril. Like walking outside. Take away the processed sugar but god forbid the boys use sticks for swords. I should have gone outside more then, make up for it in thunderstorm bike rides today my gears are slowly rusting.

Notebooks

I know I’m nowhere but
that nowhere would be even less

knowable if there weren’t
stacks of you keeping track

the passing thoughts in pen
instead of doodles I have a record

what was in my head almost
never what a professor professed

and every year since a calendar
to mark the holes in my memory

whatever I failed to write or forgot
or flippantly left out of your mouth

Breakfast

we wake gripping hides
shaking the sleep from our eyes
digging nails reach for
pleasures inside
kicking and screaming the silent
waves that emanate
two prone surfaces stretch for days
every inch struggles to make its way
under the fingertips
under the crushing weight of heightened state
under the sheets that wrap us tight and aware
and when we finish we stare,
fall back
and dream

Eschatology

A fortnight
is but the lull between paychecks,
the family vacation’s patiently
collected days, maybe
to some the loss of
forty three names for lichens or
another’s recipes
for tree root alchemy.

Over that span somewhere
instinctual knowledge of the river’s
fluid mechanics, a herd’s migration
unwritten, goes missing
afar, isolated
or conquered
as the lost knot language.

One more phrase has dropped
golden and wrinkled, withered;
the gods who brought rain
no longer called upon,
their names cease to be relevant
now, those limbs bare
come spring.

Worn stone inscriptions,
pass the lips of the last
remaining elder
whose world was shaped by this
dying grammar, these breathing
vaults filled with knowing turned
to bide time as artifacts

by the young, who learn
like Dacians, Mahicans, Huns
the tongue of another;
the tongue that promises
work, new life, new phrases
to define a world, a universe
a missing afterlife

while whole galaxies collapse
in the failed hunt, the bad harvest
in that final breath
of the ultimate speaker
the echo,
the silence,
the vacuum on the 15th day


(updated 10/28/08)

Sleeping In A Crime Scene

Insomnia rides these sheets
minds never cease
without white noise,
incantations,
lullabies of distraction
so that I may have some peace.

She's always lurking right behind me.
Any time is better;
rest my eyes and
let it go
but night will never
leave me satisfied
to know

If I had maybe gone and killed this.
Someday, someplace
we both get over it.
I'll say
your name again
the way I always meant it.