An Afternoon At The Biograph
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Spinal Tap
The feeling of you pulling
Away is the instant beverage
Reader's Digest experience
Condensed bitters and soda
Version
Of our twenty years.
From the Edinburgh University Companion To Twentieth Century British and American War Literature
I had thought for the last couple years this poem was lost, but using the link in the footnote in the book excerpt I was able to locate the original version that had been on Poets Against The War. That was at a site run by Glenn Butkus, link here: http://bibliosity.blogspot.com/2009/09/artificial-light.html please visit and support people into poetry and ideas and truth and beauty and goodness and...
Artificial Light
Under the sweet desert
the anniversary impulse
is bred into
the soldiers heart...
in time nine beats
for eleven measures
and self disappears
into the Arabian rhythm.
In rhythms and beats the orange
sun rises and violent
its violet edges
say good night
and good morning
to insurgents and surges
of soldiers playing and plying
the dead for mediated
affirmations of each other's
causation.
Under yellow sodium
artificial light
death came.
To each with ecstasy, sadness,
passion and numbness;
To each with pain,
forgiveness,
and hatred.
Two televisions sit facing
each other, transmitting
in different languages, filling
the air with sounds
mixing together,
playing to an ever
deafening crowd.
-Mark Brunke
https://driftwoodforgetting.blogspot.com/2009/10/artificial-light.html
the three level house
The three level house returned
In my dreams.
One was left behind this time.
In the mirror your hand fades into.
We left with the wall engine when
I woke up.
the day passed without love
The day passed without love. Is this
Real? Thus is the morning past.
Is this what she meant by moving on?
The sky hangs, dull in a grey fog,
Nowhere bathed in hidden violet
Electricity. Reflective early light lays
Out with dimness, purposeless as passing
Noises from the street. Loveless day
Has no red thorns, it's coffee lacks
A bite. A world less alive in every thing.
How different is the sand when your in love?
How different is the sand to lovers?
The sea is cold today, just cold. The waves
Erase, leaving a blank slate, a malformed
Table that could be a thousand memories.
Somewhere she looks upon the same see,
Unencumbered by memories
Of insignificant acquaintances, long
Since past the itch of a passing flea.
I wish I could see the same sea,
The one without me.
Upon the Penultimate Day of a Year
Come upon me this lasting year this last
In which my heart led new went completely
For love.
A year of failure unless success is
A failure of a certain kind.
I started like this calendar in January.
Months distracting had led me to a place.
But then came the twenty first day of the month. And then the twenty second.
The twenty third though, that was the day
I was broken. "She was the Universe",
a line drifted through my mind.
Every day I think of you, and every time I think of you,
its always good. Even the panic. Even the calm.
Every moment in your presence was electric. Then, one day,
I started crying. I would come home,
and that slow commute would be filled with tears.
And then after a few days, I realized I'd fallen in love.
Love isn't always a place we want to be.
Everyone gets that wrong. Sometimes it arrives
at the wrong time in life, and other times
its terrifying.
Such as the times its real, and you have no wish to believe
it to be true. And you want it, and you push it away,
and you can't tell the difference between desire and fear.
January 23rd. Grey green eyes.
Always it seemed it was as easy to fall out of love
as to fall in, that it had its resolutions. If a resolution
by passion was not available, then some expression,
and maybe someone else. But love always faded.
Until it didn't. And with it more fear, more insecurity,
more that sensation of the spirit becoming loose
of the body. And more knowledge of the impossibility
of love to be true. And then more sorrow.
And still it did not fade.
So I tried separation, if not a week, then never seeing her again.
And still it did not fade. I drove, I bathed myself in exhaustion,
I laid myself at the waters edge, I drowned in sound.
I fell into another kind of love.
And still it did not fade. Everytime I think of you, its always good.
Even the panic.
In which my heart led new went completely
For love.
A year of failure unless success is
A failure of a certain kind.
I started like this calendar in January.
Months distracting had led me to a place.
But then came the twenty first day of the month. And then the twenty second.
The twenty third though, that was the day
I was broken. "She was the Universe",
a line drifted through my mind.
Every day I think of you, and every time I think of you,
its always good. Even the panic. Even the calm.
Every moment in your presence was electric. Then, one day,
I started crying. I would come home,
and that slow commute would be filled with tears.
And then after a few days, I realized I'd fallen in love.
Love isn't always a place we want to be.
Everyone gets that wrong. Sometimes it arrives
at the wrong time in life, and other times
its terrifying.
Such as the times its real, and you have no wish to believe
it to be true. And you want it, and you push it away,
and you can't tell the difference between desire and fear.
January 23rd. Grey green eyes.
Always it seemed it was as easy to fall out of love
as to fall in, that it had its resolutions. If a resolution
by passion was not available, then some expression,
and maybe someone else. But love always faded.
Until it didn't. And with it more fear, more insecurity,
more that sensation of the spirit becoming loose
of the body. And more knowledge of the impossibility
of love to be true. And then more sorrow.
And still it did not fade.
So I tried separation, if not a week, then never seeing her again.
And still it did not fade. I drove, I bathed myself in exhaustion,
I laid myself at the waters edge, I drowned in sound.
I fell into another kind of love.
And still it did not fade. Everytime I think of you, its always good.
Even the panic.
poorlovesdisasterpour
Poor love's disasters pour in artifice
Of Love's eyes I write to from distant
Reaches. Listing reaches, leslied reaches.
My half arm day failures, this sad inkling.
Done along some old song, coming upon
Memory, a sound, a scene, a scent, a
Smile fading and imagination
Furthers from a radio to these flesh-
Become-words, bearing highlights of despair.
Despair that my heart leads me places where
Like Gertrudian Oakland, there's no there.
And there I sit, winter's gloom upon my
morning eyes, in my morning often, the
oven of my pen. A Fool, upside down.
ihatemyoxygen
I don't know why the colors
Run that way, the way they fi fo dum
Maybe they like being thick
And hard to clean up
Could be I hate my body
Like the way love runs away
When I give it your name
I don't know how the colors
Change that easy, I've heard fee fi fo
It's from the oxygen
Maybe they're thick like me, never
Learning simple lessons
In quiet and not sharing, save me
Some cleaning, I hate my body.
I doubt and don't believe in God if
God looks like me, in mirror silver
Covered in steak steam, settling on broken
Glass, darkly within my fever.
Like the way love runs away
When I give it your name.
A face in fractions looking back.
I wipe my finger on the image to see
Clearly my black hair, but its colorless:
Water beading, building and running.
Maybe its thin line is thin like me, never
Learning to keep the feelings in, save me
From running down my skin, save me
Some cleaning, I hate my oxygen.
1328
Time is a tragedy
The news never
Identifies.
All living things
That have been
Have died.
So in time will I,
And all that is.
It is a fire,
And in this moment
Somewhere
Are universes gone.
A new year comes
And another passes,
Thirteen moons,
Each of its days,
And each day timeless
But passed.
The Sun does not comment
Upon our parabolas.
The news never
Identifies.
All living things
That have been
Have died.
So in time will I,
And all that is.
It is a fire,
And in this moment
Somewhere
Are universes gone.
A new year comes
And another passes,
Thirteen moons,
Each of its days,
And each day timeless
But passed.
The Sun does not comment
Upon our parabolas.
it was a year
It was the best of years
The worst of years
It lent itself easy to paraphrase
Call me Bartleby
Call me anything
People just don't share their feelings
They leave them inside
So they don't catch a burning sun
And get left alive alone for winter
Falling in love and falling apart
Picking up the pieces
In looking we find, but ever
Do we find the missing?
Do we find the missing?
I wish I could see you again
Eyes of sapphire green and pink sleeves
Eating pizza and talking of Michaelangelo
These canned peaches
Were really something
And I'm just left drawing the label
no easy way through tomorrow
I've been worth desires and dreams
Weights that hold me to the bottom of the sea
There's a low hum while I sing this doom
There's a space I take in between rooms
Everybody laughs while I weigh to die Everybody cries while I fly away
I swim through the waters of ambition
I think the sky starts at the surface
I think when I breathe I drink sunlight
Sunlit and slight I make my move.
Is it you?
I'm going through my own voice
Out my head a broken screen
My mouth twisted silence
My words a wasted dance.
Scars from the blackouts
All over your life now
Scars from my blackouts
Imagine me down
They read like a roadmap
With some Jesus attraction.
I know your a fascination,
But I can't help but wonder
Why.
Why my voice, in silence blackouts,
In between rooms,
Imagines me down.
Your voice a mask on my pillow
Love doesn't move on
Mad barker in winter carnival
Empty.
No easy way through tomorrow,
In between rooms.
Is it you?
I opened a silent book, laid the words out,
Painted there pictures that measured
My weight out, followed my anchor
Into a bottomless trench.
It's not a new world on the other side,
It's just someone without.
It's it you?
O Black Sun
Oh, so lay down in this morning hour,
Darkness darkest there must soon be dawn.
O Soleil Noir, dors maintenant.
Let the Sun of day rise upon this room,
These trees, grace these walls not
With ever-present greyscale winter,
Waiting to fade loveless as love leaves
Us. Fade from my eyes Black Sun, fade.
Leave me to fall in winter, old, broken, in tears.
Leave me to why. Let ley lines upon my mind
Be just imagination, meanings this mortal
Machine made, cover them in mud and moss
But not this frost, be just driftwood
And I a fool on a beach, leave Leslie
To my memory eye, become driftwood forgetting.
In driftwood forgetting again, I go back
Into quiet, a lesser life lived if living
Is clarity and solitude. In my art I captured
That day, the day Sun burned my mind,
I lacquered flowers and grass that breathed
Their last in the fading hours fresh
In my impressions of love and confusion.
I see them here, black squares of tone
And time captured, slowly illuminated
By the morning. Their definition comes
To be as night fades unrequited.
the history of water
Slow lumbering beast
Lurking heart
Hidden beneath winter buffalo grass
Spring beneath the ice
Forming life
For the physical sky
there is a sacred sky
For the physical earth
there is a sacred earth
For the physical love
there is a sacred love
For the physical body
there is clay mixed with water
and you're coated in a second skin
that dries in the sun, a deep red
turns light brown, cracks
and peels, and your naked
and covered in dust, wind
bristles, wearing myth
in eternal return.
With your forefinger of your left hand
you touch your tongue and draw
an eye on your forehead
as the sun rises
and my deep voice, wordless
before your illumination,
is wordless before
your illumination.
For the physical sky
there is a sacred sky
For the physical earth
there is a sacred earth
For the physical love
there is a sacred love
For the physical body
there is clay mixed with water
and you're coated in a second skin
that dries in the sun, a deep red
turns light brown, cracks
and peels, and your naked
and covered in dust, wind
bristles, wearing myth
in eternal return.
With your forefinger of your left hand
you touch your tongue and draw
an eye on your forehead
as the sun rises
and my deep voice, wordless
before your illumination,
is wordless before
your illumination.
I make sad distributions
I make sad distributions
Of property
To feed
Such things
As pieces
I make a hand of musings
For inspiration
She is distant
And it's still
Still the only thing
I can draw paint from
And so I draw
Nothing
That's the evidence
Of something
Of property
To feed
Such things
As pieces
I make a hand of musings
For inspiration
She is distant
And it's still
Still the only thing
I can draw paint from
And so I draw
Nothing
That's the evidence
Of something
ghost dancer giving thanks
Ghost dancer giving thanks walks across
Fish Lake pray past the old Pine
That marks the passage to the place
Where the peacemakers went when they were
Irrelevant
That time in the years, the years right after,
After the famine came, after we began
Giving into reservations.
They gathered in the spirit, the spirit called
Madness, the one that cried for food
As much as freedom, that wondered
Where the buffalo went, what god did
Not let them return, shady skies and
Bodies in a bloodless Earth.
The Starvation of 1884.
a history in short wherein love lies
A history in short wherein love lies:
What was true lays in down, and defeated
I suppose, it was good to be needed.
But then kneaded and falsely given rise,
I left myself often open what for
Appeared as kindness but was just a door.
She exists, a constant performance in
Consistent adornment of consciences
Created to elude her lack of sin,
A future held back by present fences.
I suppose it was good to be needed,
Yet learn asking same to be defeated,
Microcosms of her alcohol rise,
History in short of a love less lies.
The Muses
Terpsichore
The Men-Think
the debris
she left was gathered,
given implication, and
a faction.
A war
on memory,
this war.
Shrapnel,
a word floats
a parade
inside
a bandaged head.
Calliope
The fear is coming back
into particles of light.
Erato
In December light
Simple little glue, blue flies,
eight days to get
straight, I'm
waiting on Tuesday.
We muse upon
their liberty, a ruse
of sovereignty, careless
in our salvation dispenser.
Clio
The noisemakers wandering up
a Persian landscape.
Six thousand one years
back to Zoroaster,
twenty six point four degrees
twisted
against the sun.
Six thousand Year Ones
back to Zoroaster,
and there she stands
by the color TV.
Urania
What half would I have been?
The sphere is coming
back into particles of light.
Polyhymnia
The Mother nurse, she is standing
by the color TV. From
where I am looking,
air is nowhere,
but there is
air in everything.
Euterpe
The head
is a receptacle, the mind
is a wire, listen
and you will figure out
why: There
is where I am from,
and then There is Me,
and then There is Everything.
I heard the egg screaming
the secret name of God.
Melpomene
I am listening
to the desert sea.
The sound is pieces
of conflict sculpted
on transportable
insurance beds.
Half-lives of radiation TV.
I wonder which half I would have been?
Thalia
Where were my welds
and my mounds, my wounds
of Vietnam? Why did Americans
not bring home a poetry
of the mountains
and quiet rivers? Why was it
only the wreckage and Eagles?
It flies under me,
a war
on memory,
This war.
A war on memory,
this war
too will end. The fatherless
will look to the land,
not for a connection
but a conviction, a plea
bargain. They will be
dog bodies of the August moon,
a yield of the American sundown.
Game mercenaries lying crosswise
In the vast stage of history, epitaphs
for opinionated pandering.
Under the empires
their youth will be providence
but limbless, a viral video
easily forgotten
against the lineage of oil sacks
and moneyrooms.
Will they see their own mind, in a prison,
eyes lidless under a forgetting sky?
We are born turning revolutions.
The mirrors give us the illusion
of time as moving forward.
The interruptions in the lineal
system betray the circles we spin
until darkness becomes light,
everywhere, mirrors,
everywhere, the face of God.
And when we become blind,
we live, with our fear,
in the past, or we live
with our fear in the past.
The Men-Think
the debris
she left was gathered,
given implication, and
a faction.
A war
on memory,
this war.
Shrapnel,
a word floats
a parade
inside
a bandaged head.
Calliope
The fear is coming back
into particles of light.
Erato
In December light
Simple little glue, blue flies,
eight days to get
straight, I'm
waiting on Tuesday.
We muse upon
their liberty, a ruse
of sovereignty, careless
in our salvation dispenser.
Clio
The noisemakers wandering up
a Persian landscape.
Six thousand one years
back to Zoroaster,
twenty six point four degrees
twisted
against the sun.
Six thousand Year Ones
back to Zoroaster,
and there she stands
by the color TV.
Urania
What half would I have been?
The sphere is coming
back into particles of light.
Polyhymnia
The Mother nurse, she is standing
by the color TV. From
where I am looking,
air is nowhere,
but there is
air in everything.
Euterpe
The head
is a receptacle, the mind
is a wire, listen
and you will figure out
why: There
is where I am from,
and then There is Me,
and then There is Everything.
I heard the egg screaming
the secret name of God.
Melpomene
I am listening
to the desert sea.
The sound is pieces
of conflict sculpted
on transportable
insurance beds.
Half-lives of radiation TV.
I wonder which half I would have been?
Thalia
Where were my welds
and my mounds, my wounds
of Vietnam? Why did Americans
not bring home a poetry
of the mountains
and quiet rivers? Why was it
only the wreckage and Eagles?
It flies under me,
a war
on memory,
This war.
A war on memory,
this war
too will end. The fatherless
will look to the land,
not for a connection
but a conviction, a plea
bargain. They will be
dog bodies of the August moon,
a yield of the American sundown.
Game mercenaries lying crosswise
In the vast stage of history, epitaphs
for opinionated pandering.
Under the empires
their youth will be providence
but limbless, a viral video
easily forgotten
against the lineage of oil sacks
and moneyrooms.
Will they see their own mind, in a prison,
eyes lidless under a forgetting sky?
We are born turning revolutions.
The mirrors give us the illusion
of time as moving forward.
The interruptions in the lineal
system betray the circles we spin
until darkness becomes light,
everywhere, mirrors,
everywhere, the face of God.
And when we become blind,
we live, with our fear,
in the past, or we live
with our fear in the past.
Moving-On-To-Nothing
Everybody falls in love it's just something
Everybody does
Something everybody knows
Everybody does
Something everybody knows
Everyone feels alone it's just something
Everybody knows
Something everybody does
Everybody knows
Something everybody does
Everyone goes home inside themselves
Everybody is a body that doesn't show
Nothing ever comes of joy
Love leaves you to die alone
Love leaves
Through all the seasons
Falling from a tree made of everything
Everything that came before
Everybody is a body that doesn't show
Nothing ever comes of joy
Love leaves you to die alone
Love leaves
Through all the seasons
Falling from a tree made of everything
Everything that came before
You feed the stardust alone
The years go by, there's nobody home
We end in memories of yesterday
Before moving on to nothing
The years go by, there's nobody home
We end in memories of yesterday
Before moving on to nothing
I Only Know My Love By Few Moments
I only know my love by few moments
Five and ten feet deep. Only memories
In my eyes at night in sleepless arrest,
Replayed as a film, moments of a force
Acting at a distance, flickering scenes
Before me, as my eyes fade and age in
Darkness, the light ever towards night, her eyes.
Few minutes they were, fewer the count yet
When measured in hours, a book of few pages.
Yet read them I do, every breath and word,
Every moment of her, each slow gesture.
Relive then I do, pain in an ever
Increasing distance. Of this loveless day
I can only hope it ends, or I can
Hope.
Life At First Sight Is A Broken Heart
It is
It's broken
The first time I looked across a room
And saw you, the way you moved
And your eyes, and your smile
The things poets have to write about
I saw my future
Falling apart
An edge
Falling apart
An edge
A broken heart
When you touched my elbow
I was shocked to life
And I found I dove
In feather pieces
In feather pieces
Into the future until it became passed
A broken heart at first sight
Everything bypassed
Like a nine month wormhole
You devastate me
A memory like a book of poetry unread
How did I learn your smile?
How did I learn to quit?
When food that begins
How did that become me?
When food that begins
How did that become me?
How do you sit alone
In a crowded room
Unlit in despair?
Those lonely souls who have lingering
Lumbering days, space
Those lonely souls who have lingering
Lumbering days, space
What is love?
I always fall in love, with every beautiful
Thing and then another too, it's a flaw
I know to look for, that if there's love
There must be one more, converging
And coming through the stinging door.
Whenever there is stillness
Thoughts run back to you,
If I say I know how to move on
It was out of fear. I don't even
Know what it means. I've learned.
Love is sometimes a stone mountain,
It may be a thousand different things
At a thousand different times,
But someday you may notice, every
Little once in awhile you may notice,
Beneath that season's grass or the collapsing
Tourist, it's a stone mountain.
To The Moon
I love you. To the Moon in the window,
Reflective of the grey horizon, in
The 27th house, in the corner. In
The violet sky, to the moon shine hidden,
Visible in backlit night, I love you.
I love you too, I'll never learn to fly.
Artificial Light
Under the sweet desert
the anniversary impulse
is bred into
the soldiers heart...
in time nine beats
for eleven measures
and self dissappears
into the Arabian rhythm.
In rhythms and beats the orange
sun rises and violent
its violet edges
say good night
and good morning
to insurgents and surges
of soldiers playing and plying
the dead for mediated
affirmations of each other's
causation.
Under yellow sodium
artificial light
death came.
To each with ecstasy, sadness,
passion and numbness;
To each with pain,
forgiveness,
and hatred.
Two televisions sit facing
each other, transmitting
in different languages, filling
the air with sounds
mixing together,
playing to an ever
deafening crowd.
the anniversary impulse
is bred into
the soldiers heart...
in time nine beats
for eleven measures
and self dissappears
into the Arabian rhythm.
In rhythms and beats the orange
sun rises and violent
its violet edges
say good night
and good morning
to insurgents and surges
of soldiers playing and plying
the dead for mediated
affirmations of each other's
causation.
Under yellow sodium
artificial light
death came.
To each with ecstasy, sadness,
passion and numbness;
To each with pain,
forgiveness,
and hatred.
Two televisions sit facing
each other, transmitting
in different languages, filling
the air with sounds
mixing together,
playing to an ever
deafening crowd.
Sidewalk Infirmary Forgetting Its Own War
What slugs fall apart
On our sidewalks?
Their eyeless
Destruction and left
Path of glue
On the cement progress,
The veins of Our Earth.
I think its clay red skin,
And gasoline eyes
In a limbless five-year old.
What Heaven will account
Such slaughter as righteous?
What would we do
To someone who did
That to a child
Who lived on the next block?
And nevertheless its satisfactory in War.
Human art is sculpted
On the dusty surface
Of history's table.
Occasional chips
In the lacquer reflection
Reveal the dead tree
At the center of
The construction.
Plastic raincoat
To keep out the termites.
More eyeless feeders.
We think they are so blind,
With carbombs and cellphones
And messages from God.
What is it the blind
See? A child of American
Ingenuity, the crust of
Western civilization
Burned on a dead surface?
Maybe an overflowing
Bodybag buried inside
The gates of Abu Graib?
Maybe War Criminals
Asking for a piece
Or maybe just peace
When the money runs dry?
Maybe politicians
Planting coalitions
On carcasses, a sure
Measure of success?
the oregon trail has failed
you in your
faith healing death,
God’s odd way to welcome
you to Antelope country.
The Way of the Rain
What language was that
Drifting across
The grey fabric
Of your leg?
The uncovered spaces
Near my eye
Still ache
From the dull wind,
Someone left a pin
In there after my birth.
The entire sky
Is a cloud,
The earth a skin,
a coagulant
Corpse. It's twelve
Pieces of skin.
What we think of as dirt
Is covering
worm meat in
radiated chicken,
pink and isolated,
Its surface burned
From a boiling torture.
Some veins sicken the air.
We make feathers
Into hemlock tea,
And all the questions are
dusted for wax works.
If I were to weigh the rain,
and lay down in your sleep,
all the decay would be lifted
From this infirmary.
On our sidewalks?
Their eyeless
Destruction and left
Path of glue
On the cement progress,
The veins of Our Earth.
I think its clay red skin,
And gasoline eyes
In a limbless five-year old.
What Heaven will account
Such slaughter as righteous?
What would we do
To someone who did
That to a child
Who lived on the next block?
And nevertheless its satisfactory in War.
Human art is sculpted
On the dusty surface
Of history's table.
Occasional chips
In the lacquer reflection
Reveal the dead tree
At the center of
The construction.
Plastic raincoat
To keep out the termites.
More eyeless feeders.
We think they are so blind,
With carbombs and cellphones
And messages from God.
What is it the blind
See? A child of American
Ingenuity, the crust of
Western civilization
Burned on a dead surface?
Maybe an overflowing
Bodybag buried inside
The gates of Abu Graib?
Maybe War Criminals
Asking for a piece
Or maybe just peace
When the money runs dry?
Maybe politicians
Planting coalitions
On carcasses, a sure
Measure of success?
the oregon trail has failed
you in your
faith healing death,
God’s odd way to welcome
you to Antelope country.
The Way of the Rain
What language was that
Drifting across
The grey fabric
Of your leg?
The uncovered spaces
Near my eye
Still ache
From the dull wind,
Someone left a pin
In there after my birth.
The entire sky
Is a cloud,
The earth a skin,
a coagulant
Corpse. It's twelve
Pieces of skin.
What we think of as dirt
Is covering
worm meat in
radiated chicken,
pink and isolated,
Its surface burned
From a boiling torture.
Some veins sicken the air.
We make feathers
Into hemlock tea,
And all the questions are
dusted for wax works.
If I were to weigh the rain,
and lay down in your sleep,
all the decay would be lifted
From this infirmary.
Our Close Distance
When will I come home
And see that lamp in
Your flickering room?
What will you do, home
From the war? Sunlight
And summer ore, or
Bus stop and creeping
Mourning through the night before?
What will you do,
Bandaged in your skin?
I will drink lampwax
And leave terracotta dust,
My faith and wonder withering in
Shadows on couches and grass arenas.
Until a semblance of my substance
Emerges, resembling enough,
Just enough encaustic dust,
So you may trust your memory,
Unlock the door, and let me in
from this close distance.
And see that lamp in
Your flickering room?
What will you do, home
From the war? Sunlight
And summer ore, or
Bus stop and creeping
Mourning through the night before?
What will you do,
Bandaged in your skin?
I will drink lampwax
And leave terracotta dust,
My faith and wonder withering in
Shadows on couches and grass arenas.
Until a semblance of my substance
Emerges, resembling enough,
Just enough encaustic dust,
So you may trust your memory,
Unlock the door, and let me in
from this close distance.
Mothers Go To War
Mothers go to war
their hearts extended
in the sky
as their only Icarus
goes too far
in the song of some
black eyed sunflower lie
wax wings melting in the dust
and mothers go to war
in their windows
and streets
hearts beating loud
the drums of broken wings
their hearts extended
in the sky
as their only Icarus
goes too far
in the song of some
black eyed sunflower lie
wax wings melting in the dust
and mothers go to war
in their windows
and streets
hearts beating loud
the drums of broken wings
Rye Grandmothers
Hallucinations, Recollections, and Illusions in Childhood
No. 1037,
Rye Ergot and Witches
The
object study for this experiment is a typical grouping of residential and
transient Americans in the target age range necessary for the psychological
implementation of memory. Each subject
has no knowledge of the test and targets were retrieved under the guise of an
advertisement to attend a theatre screening of experimental films. The subjects
were gathered within 100 to 135 feet of the transmitter. For the purpose of the experiment
Hallucinations will be defined as false perceptions in the absence of sensory
stimulation, dependent on two processes: (1) the recollection of stored
information and (2) its false interpretation as an extrinsic experience
entering through sensory inputs.
Today
we ask: is it from God? Is it from the
Devil? Or is it from the bread we
eat? The
College of Engineering would like to welcome you here today, this series
is about the machines that make our civilization run, and the ingenuity that
has created them. By the mid 1970’s evidence was offered that the Salem witch
trials followed an outbreak of rye ergot.
Ergot is a fungus blight that forms hallucinogenic drugs in bread. Its victims can appear bewitched when they’re
actually stoned. As such, many symptoms
of the plague are similar to childhood.
Current technology allows a modification of the natural method ergot
touches external reality by the transmission of
physical and chemical event surroundings into electrical and chemical
sequences at the sensory receptor level. The brains of the subjects are not in
touch with the environmental reality but with its symbolic code transmitted by
and stored within neural pathways.
Ergot
thrives in a cold winter followed by a wet spring. The children of ergot might suffer paranoia
and hallucinations, twitches and spasms, cardiovascular trouble, and stillborn
children should they be allowed to marry under current laws. Ergot also seriously weakens the immune
system and can lead to nasal bleeding and seizure. The implanted childhood of these memories will not seem to be preserved
as single items but as inter-related collections of events, like the pearls on
a string, and by pulling any pearl we have access to the whole series in
perfect order or can cause the string to unravel like the mind of a donkey
encountering a mouthful of peanut
butter.
Diving
for these pearls in the history of weather, we see diets dominated by the
hallucinogenic wafer of ergot rye. As
the medieval Friar Henley reported during his stay at the Paris hospital in the
spring of 1347, on the eve of the Black Death, “Thus, excitation with
leeches of a point may produce a series of related visionary experiences with
differing specifics, as was the case in the peasants observed. The following
phenomena have been investigated in the peasantry: (1) illusions (visual,
auditory, labyrinthine, memory or déjà vu, sensation of remoteness or
unreality), (2:) emotions (loneliness,
fear, sadness), and (3) psychical hallucinations (vivid memory or a dream as
complex as life experience itself.)”
The
most common feature in the study of the present group was the sensation, that
the words, ideas, or situation they are in right now is similar to a previous
experience. There is no new perception, only the interpretation of a novel
input as one already known and familiar. There is no anxiety or fear in the
perception of these illusions, and the apparent effect is one of interested
surprise with a rather pleasant, amusing quality which makes the subjects more
alert and communicative. Like
spontaneous memories, the induced recollections bring back the emotions felt at
the time of an original experience, suggesting that neural mechanisms keep an
integrated record of the past, including all the sensory inputs and also the
emotional significance of events.
So
now we’re left to wonder just how we cope with the diseases and mental
processes we don’t understand, like today.
I read our kinship with those old ergot suffers in something Kipling
never wrote:
I have eaten your bread and it tasted of cake. I have drunk your water, the wine of your lake. The deaths ye died I have watched besides, as words
led illusions of mine.
lately the asphalt
lately the asphalt at the round
was repaired with a fill-in
the new stuff is still wet
it sticks but doesn't stick
and has a little give when pressed
was repaired with a fill-in
the new stuff is still wet
it sticks but doesn't stick
and has a little give when pressed
Last night's insomnia reading
Insomnia reading....
§81
Maiden in the mor lay,
In the mor lay,
Sevenyst fulle
Sevenist fulle.
Maiden in the mor lay,
In the mor lay,
Sevenistes fulle ant a day.
Welle was hire mete:
Wat was hire mete?
The primerole ant the,
The primerole ant the,
Welle was hire mete:
Wat was hire mete?
The primerole ant the violet.
Welle was hire dryng:
Wat was hire dryng?
The chelde water of the,
The chelde water of the,
Welle was hire dryng:
What was hire dryng?
The chelde water of the welle spring.
Welle was hire bour:
Wat was hire bour?
The red rose an te,
The red rose an te,
Welle was hire bour:
Wat was hire bour?
The rede rose an te lilie flour.
§82
Lulley, lulley, lully, lulley,
The fawcon hath born my mak away.
He bare hym up, he bare him down,
He bare hym into an orchard brown.
In that orchard ther was an hall,
That was hanged with purpill and pall.
And in that hall ther was a bede,
Hit was hangid with gold so rede.
And yn that bed ther lythe a knyght,
His wowndes bledyng day and nyght.
By that bedes side ther kneleth a may,
And she wepeth both nyght and day.
And by that bedes side ther stondith a ston,
"Corpus Christi" wretyn theron.
§83
Of on that is so fayr and bright,
Velud maris stella,
Brighter than the dayis light,
Parens et puella,
Ic crie to thee, thou se to me;
Levedy, preye thi sone for me,
Tam pia,
That ic mote come to thee,
Maria.
Levedi, flour of alle thing,
Rosa sine spina,
Thu bere Jhesu hevene king,
Gratia divina;
Of alle thu berst the pris,
Levedi, quene of parays,
Electa,
Mayde, milde Moder,
Es effecta.
Of kare, consell thou ert best,
Felix fecundata;
Of alle wery thou ert rest,
Mater honorata;
Bisek him with milde mod
That for ous alle sad is blod
In cruce,
That we moten komen til him
In luce.
Al this world was forlore
Eva peccatrice,
Tyl our Lord was ybore
De te genitrice:
With Ave it went away
Thuster nyth and comet the day
Salutis,
The welle springet hut of thee
Virtutis.
Wel he wot he is thi sone,
Ventre quem portasti;
He wyl nout werne thee thi bone,
Parvum quem lactasti.
So hende and so god he his
He havet brout ous to blis
Superni,
That haves hidut the foule put
Inferni.
The Weight
The Weight
What is it with the child abused and grown
What is it with the child abused and grown
that they keep heart and thought 'lone
was it the mother dead or the dead alive
looking backwards at the torture fingers
that held violent sway upon everything
Maybe its everything or maybe
If I hurt my children that way
The way you hurt us
I could see dying that way
I could see living that way
alone in a fifth-wheel trailer in the woods, head
laying back on a blue blanket, head laying back
in heroin and alcohol, and finally the heart stopped,
finally her heart stopped.
My mother's heart stopped, Olympia to the west.
Invisible Olympia of Indian jazz porn junkies,
dying in the woods. Maybe it was just n=1,
I never inquired as to your friends.
I hear I'm resili- I hear
reviled . I'm still here, but I'm not.
The distance between here and there closes,
reviled . I'm still here, but I'm not.
The distance between here and there closes,
the healthy mystic would use this magic to let it go
Its hard to let go of your hands
hold up your hands, let them go
see your fingers? they don't.
I remember crying as a child in fear
everyday that you were alive
I remember crying as a man that you were not
everyday that it occurs to me you were gone
was there something I didn't say
maybe another line of rephrased cliche
like maybe it was better this way
my mother in death healed of all her pain
released from a North America that kills Indigenous
women from the beginning,
like DL's sister CC, remember her,
raped, naked, and dying in a field
off the reservation, all for a night of dancing,
the way the police blamed her
you'd think she flaunted some sacred law
instead of a new pair of boots
criminal boots
because their little white dicks get hard
The worse pain is to write these things
and now part of my pain is swept away
in a world of White Supremacy that says
blood quantum and skin color
as if that's what hit me in the face
it was you, and I got it, I got that same hatred
from the same place, it hit me that way
when part of me believes you would have
anyway because that is what I must be
something small, to be hit,
because you were drinking and some
mad asshole shit on your scene.
Confessions, the light is on,
a confession, you're gone.
Twenty-one years gone and its Saturday
night all over again, a temporal transfer
back to that place, ah how to write a poetry
of intersection in a world of White Supremacy,
an underlying reason why my voice
is already spent.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefitzat_Haderech
The Rehabilitation and Retrial of Joan of Arc
Below are some film stills from my short film The Rehabilitation and Retrial of Joan of Arc, an experimental Super 8mm film with original music by myself.
We Are Three Percent Nitrogen By Mass (Sunday)
What do I do
when my love never fades
For you? For
you I only have memory.
The smile of
one kind face in the days of
Only one
kind face. Why does love not fade?
Why can love
not ease itself from today?
Why can we
not lift our thinking out of
Our heads
and maybe even compost it…
I would
worry about the nitrogen,
Likely. I’m sure
my thoughts are of released
Nitrogen,
that is just more evidence
Of a recent
decomposition.
There is no another. Thoughts invaded
Now array themselves into new arrays.
There is now absence,
one has gone away.
There is no another. Thoughts invaded
Now array themselves into new arrays.
There is now absence,
one has gone away.
Three Poems from 2009 and 2010
Watching
We burned in
The war of Falls,
All around us,
Angels dropping
like flies;
I love what is still
All night, falling
In a walk through
All the
broken
years of us
In polar distances of
The quiet
Lunch sounds
we make out of
difficult conversations,
talking a round desire.
Lessons drift into your soft muscle,
Eyes lost on the wooden beach,
Curvature and bubble shapes, mucus turning
you from pink to brown.
The war of Falls,
These broken wingless
Words, bridges
Left decaying in brown rust
slowly straying over old green paint
as the new constructions rise.
Only the curious will wonder
Why we were, and they will become
something few and rare.
Armless, dark eyes, brittle
flowers reduced to pigment
and videography.
I remember you even as I see you,
room, and moment,
alone, illuminated
runes, and evening shadows
covered in a yellow sodium
of memory,
just an elbow
on a green
cabinet, your eyes
backlight,
we never touched.
We burned.
The war of Falls,
All around us,
Angels dropping
like flies;
I love what is still
All night, falling
In a walk through
All the
broken
years of us
In polar distances of
The quiet
Lunch sounds
we make out of
difficult conversations,
talking a round desire.
Lessons drift into your soft muscle,
Eyes lost on the wooden beach,
Curvature and bubble shapes, mucus turning
you from pink to brown.
The war of Falls,
These broken wingless
Words, bridges
Left decaying in brown rust
slowly straying over old green paint
as the new constructions rise.
Only the curious will wonder
Why we were, and they will become
something few and rare.
Armless, dark eyes, brittle
flowers reduced to pigment
and videography.
I remember you even as I see you,
room, and moment,
alone, illuminated
runes, and evening shadows
covered in a yellow sodium
of memory,
just an elbow
on a green
cabinet, your eyes
backlight,
we never touched.
We burned.
War Runs Across My Life
This digital world
lingers
and does not bring
us closer together.
I only see
my self with the help
of telescopes.
Every love song
reminds me of sadness,
every sad song
reminds me of a plastic
radion. When will this end?
We are torn apart,
slightly separated
by the presence
of conflict, bombs,
some scholar might say
the sweep
of world events;
yet it is back
to the feelings
of distance, the desolation
that you are
not here and may not
be, that causes
an unspoken anguish
I can share with no one.
And they say this digital world
brings us closer together,
"they", hmmm, who? who?
And yet when we talk,
I at night
and you
in the morning,
message by message,
it is only the distance
that is illuminated,
a trembling, quail distance.
I see these threads
unwinding finally,
back to a river in Vietnam,
a bear, a mountain,
drinking cold
too close to the mouth.
Sunlight breaks the horizon
water desert, brown
sand coming out of
your brown hair.
lingers
and does not bring
us closer together.
I only see
my self with the help
of telescopes.
Every love song
reminds me of sadness,
every sad song
reminds me of a plastic
radion. When will this end?
We are torn apart,
slightly separated
by the presence
of conflict, bombs,
some scholar might say
the sweep
of world events;
yet it is back
to the feelings
of distance, the desolation
that you are
not here and may not
be, that causes
an unspoken anguish
I can share with no one.
And they say this digital world
brings us closer together,
"they", hmmm, who? who?
And yet when we talk,
I at night
and you
in the morning,
message by message,
it is only the distance
that is illuminated,
a trembling, quail distance.
I see these threads
unwinding finally,
back to a river in Vietnam,
a bear, a mountain,
drinking cold
too close to the mouth.
Sunlight breaks the horizon
water desert, brown
sand coming out of
your brown hair.
Our Close Distance
When will I come home
And see that lamp in
Your flickering room?
What will you do, home
From the war? Sunlight
And summer ore, or
Bus stop and creeping
Mourning through the night before?
What will you do,
Bandaged in your skin?
I will drink lampwax
And leave terracotta dust,
My faith and wonder withering in
Shadows on couches and grass arenas;
Until a semblance of my substance
Emerges, resembling enough,
Just enough encaustic dust,
So you may trust your memory,
Unlock the door, and let me in
from this close distance.
And see that lamp in
Your flickering room?
What will you do, home
From the war? Sunlight
And summer ore, or
Bus stop and creeping
Mourning through the night before?
What will you do,
Bandaged in your skin?
I will drink lampwax
And leave terracotta dust,
My faith and wonder withering in
Shadows on couches and grass arenas;
Until a semblance of my substance
Emerges, resembling enough,
Just enough encaustic dust,
So you may trust your memory,
Unlock the door, and let me in
from this close distance.
Sonnet #1
I dissolved in this minstrelsy: your blood
Beautiful smell falls within thoughts of us;
Tea’s pass in winds of opportunity.
These inklings of orphan lines before your
Clay skin drapery, adorned with snakes
Where no earth is passing beneath me, just
Unrequited looks over lunch and hair.
If I could only speak the eye musing
Heard in your voice: warm light filters my gaze
Into you: river grey eyes, drowning stars!
How many of these tea ceremonies
Have ended with your head coming down on
Nothing but your own shoulder! My dear friend:
Is love bound to ending silence? Harm? Care?
Beautiful smell falls within thoughts of us;
Tea’s pass in winds of opportunity.
These inklings of orphan lines before your
Clay skin drapery, adorned with snakes
Where no earth is passing beneath me, just
Unrequited looks over lunch and hair.
If I could only speak the eye musing
Heard in your voice: warm light filters my gaze
Into you: river grey eyes, drowning stars!
How many of these tea ceremonies
Have ended with your head coming down on
Nothing but your own shoulder! My dear friend:
Is love bound to ending silence? Harm? Care?
Drumlight
Drumlight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5sRphng8mE
What are Drumlights? http://www.polarityrecords.com/vintage-drum-kits-1920s-and-30s.html
The
Plural They, My Children,
They
are the most beautiful creatures,
moving
at the speed of their growth,
and
perhaps it is just my voice
missing
them,
it
puts their memory
before
me,
pure
imagination
running
rampant
as
the hour of bedlam closes.
Some
frog
Tree
creature
and
another
that
is perhaps a dangling scarecrow
...with
a crow problem.
They
move
in
what appears to be a dance.
They
are
the
most beautiful creatures.
They
appear
unappear
like translucent ninjas.
They
have
fooled
me with invisibility amulets again!
They
love
to
dance victoriously upon
the
vanquished foe that am I.
Transubstantiation
We were everywhere, sent from here, sent to there, left to fade after the war.
What did you do, coming home from the wake? Did you lay down in the sun, asleep in the eel grass, creeping toward a mourning of that night, a pregnant future, dry light driftwood on a beach under the darkness of a new moon?
We drink hurricane lanterns inside your pink wax, touching each others terracotta dust, glitter and disco feeling the soft inside of cracker lips lumbering towards the west with a change of substance.
I begged that you trust your memory, unlocking the door to let me in from our close distance.
I came like a dwelling wound, eyes removed by the lamp in your iridescent space, I came home from the war, bandaged in your skin.
The Groceries
What will we do with the groceries?
It is night, tonight’s the night:the last night of our house.
The kids like pasta twice a week,
and we did for the thousandth time
and then this night for the third
in a row, have that. And then it
was movie night, for the last
time family movie night
on this purple couch with that
yellow starred green blanket and
the love to slumber under
after a bowl of popcorn,
sleeping into the epilogue.
You were already gone to sleep,
as you do. When did that start?
It must have been a night
like tonight. Maybe that night
was the last night, maybe
it was the first new moon.
To bed I carried the kids, but then
had to sleep on their floor,
as always. Friday was ghost stories
at camp, again. They believed
something would come back
from the dead to steal them
in their sleep. But now they are
sleeping. I know the sound, its
always there, your sound,
as if you were a baby,
I was here when you were a baby
and all it took was shhh and holding
you close to my heart. Then the ghosts
dissappear. Will they tomorrow?
Only for my baby, but
not for my darling.
This Digital World
War runs across my life-
from the deserts of Vietnam
and the meadows of Death Valley
to the drugs the surgeon
took to get off before
before he operates tonight.
I miss you, and me.
That's easy, so I confuse things,
elaborate, artificialize
nothing more than the curve
and shape of visible light
on desire's skin.
This digital world
lingers
and does not bring
us closer together.
There are images of bodies
in my hand, in every hand
across the Earth and Space
and back to my birth
in a river in Vietnam
for I wasn't born where my mother said,
she was drugged, the hole I came out of
was not even my father's heart
but his brother or his cousin
or the shame-son thrown through
the hooker glass and foster class
the one whose all adrenal
by the third grade and looking
to numb the knees with pearl pellets,
kids who work, floating in famine ribs,
whichever one made the wall
with a bullet to his own brain-
I mean the one's born to death-
cold rain raising their multiple surfaces
tiny hairs, tiny ridges on nipples
crevasses, curves, shadows leading down
into irregular holes
they're our bodies
in this digital world, they are ours
by a touch of glass, by the ether
we breathe, in interring the entertainment
of their death.
This war lingers in a country
addicted to heroes, everyone a hero.
Patches on their skin, the diminished
heroism of a sick nation, for there is no honesty
before a burning gasoline corpse
gang raped and smoldering,
only a cry that all the others
must be heroes. Must be heroes I see.
I see with a camera through the pinhole,
my mustard seed, the puberty of the digital earth
making war sculptures with the vacuumed dust
falling off our human footprints.
I see the lingering jar, leftover hearts,
meat drugged to numbness,
pet to desire, satisfied and sleeping
knowing the bleeding mouth is down river
and if they want authenticity
they can wear the war on their skin
and by the safest edge through an advertisement
leave the death to the dead, selling indeed
and walk on the sex sore gasoline dress, meat separated from bone,
was only that, some deed sort of sordid, the sum of
breaking entertainment news meant for the head.
This digital world lays down in me,
for I have trouble separating,
its a shy heart that is not shy
but built with hurt, a day when love did not matter.
We've built enough of these kids
to feed the earth forever.
I need my body,
my heartless body,
to have its light escape,
poured onto you.
I only see
my self with the help
of telescopes.
Every love song
reminds me Spring is mostly precept,
do not confuse my ideas with your love songs-
do not confuse yourself, my love songs are:
a rainy night, the wind and the sound of tires
that crush of noise shattering inside the right ear
and bouncing quiltedly around your gaps,
every sad song
reminds me of a question: When will this end?
We are torn apart, by ourselves and more than
slightly separated, beyond repair,
its what marriage becomes when its reduced
to a carriage of arrangements, but we are torn
and it was all from the war,
the war I was born into,
the way it lingered
by the presence
of conflict, bombs,
some scholar might say
the sweep
of world events;
yet it is back
to the feelings
of distance, the desolation
that you are
not here and may not
be, that causes
an unspoken anguish
I can share with no one, because I never know
who you are. You change with the view,
a line of red corduroy along the edge of a leg
then a curve of hair reading from a page,
the curve of the page, a parabola
of a new sweatshirt zipped, a curve
in a hood, a behind the shoulder one of these,
a lean I lean to see,
more words to hide a feel
I do not know because it landed like the Fleet
and flew away with the evening,
another thing, a distraction, something green
and the thing in itself, this very artifice
of ink where I pretend
this is all so much more than loneliness
in a blended erasure of exhaustion.
And they say this digital world
brings us closer together,
"they", I demand, who? who?
And yet when we talk,
I at night
and you
in the morning,
message by message,
it is only the distance
that is illuminated.
I see these threads
we make
unwinding finally,
back to a river in Vietnam,
a bear, a mountain,
drinking the cold
the rain heavy that built
and overflowed
too close to the mouth.
Sunlight breaks from a horizon
only in my closed eyes-
a memory of hazel-
water desert, brown gold
glass, hair dust
sand, and we just break apart
you're beautiful the way beautiful
is beautiful if its gone.
Somewhere a surgeon is removing
gloves
and even though those hands
were deep in the blood,
they are dry with a pale dust
that ends without ending.
This is the war.
from the deserts of Vietnam
and the meadows of Death Valley
to the drugs the surgeon
took to get off before
before he operates tonight.
I miss you, and me.
That's easy, so I confuse things,
elaborate, artificialize
nothing more than the curve
and shape of visible light
on desire's skin.
This digital world
lingers
and does not bring
us closer together.
There are images of bodies
in my hand, in every hand
across the Earth and Space
and back to my birth
in a river in Vietnam
for I wasn't born where my mother said,
she was drugged, the hole I came out of
was not even my father's heart
but his brother or his cousin
or the shame-son thrown through
the hooker glass and foster class
the one whose all adrenal
by the third grade and looking
to numb the knees with pearl pellets,
kids who work, floating in famine ribs,
whichever one made the wall
with a bullet to his own brain-
I mean the one's born to death-
cold rain raising their multiple surfaces
tiny hairs, tiny ridges on nipples
crevasses, curves, shadows leading down
into irregular holes
they're our bodies
in this digital world, they are ours
by a touch of glass, by the ether
we breathe, in interring the entertainment
of their death.
This war lingers in a country
addicted to heroes, everyone a hero.
Patches on their skin, the diminished
heroism of a sick nation, for there is no honesty
before a burning gasoline corpse
gang raped and smoldering,
only a cry that all the others
must be heroes. Must be heroes I see.
I see with a camera through the pinhole,
my mustard seed, the puberty of the digital earth
making war sculptures with the vacuumed dust
falling off our human footprints.
I see the lingering jar, leftover hearts,
meat drugged to numbness,
pet to desire, satisfied and sleeping
knowing the bleeding mouth is down river
and if they want authenticity
they can wear the war on their skin
and by the safest edge through an advertisement
leave the death to the dead, selling indeed
and walk on the sex sore gasoline dress, meat separated from bone,
was only that, some deed sort of sordid, the sum of
breaking entertainment news meant for the head.
This digital world lays down in me,
for I have trouble separating,
its a shy heart that is not shy
but built with hurt, a day when love did not matter.
We've built enough of these kids
to feed the earth forever.
I need my body,
my heartless body,
to have its light escape,
poured onto you.
I only see
my self with the help
of telescopes.
Every love song
reminds me Spring is mostly precept,
do not confuse my ideas with your love songs-
do not confuse yourself, my love songs are:
a rainy night, the wind and the sound of tires
that crush of noise shattering inside the right ear
and bouncing quiltedly around your gaps,
every sad song
reminds me of a question: When will this end?
We are torn apart, by ourselves and more than
slightly separated, beyond repair,
its what marriage becomes when its reduced
to a carriage of arrangements, but we are torn
and it was all from the war,
the war I was born into,
the way it lingered
by the presence
of conflict, bombs,
some scholar might say
the sweep
of world events;
yet it is back
to the feelings
of distance, the desolation
that you are
not here and may not
be, that causes
an unspoken anguish
I can share with no one, because I never know
who you are. You change with the view,
a line of red corduroy along the edge of a leg
then a curve of hair reading from a page,
the curve of the page, a parabola
of a new sweatshirt zipped, a curve
in a hood, a behind the shoulder one of these,
a lean I lean to see,
more words to hide a feel
I do not know because it landed like the Fleet
and flew away with the evening,
another thing, a distraction, something green
and the thing in itself, this very artifice
of ink where I pretend
this is all so much more than loneliness
in a blended erasure of exhaustion.
And they say this digital world
brings us closer together,
"they", I demand, who? who?
And yet when we talk,
I at night
and you
in the morning,
message by message,
it is only the distance
that is illuminated.
I see these threads
we make
unwinding finally,
back to a river in Vietnam,
a bear, a mountain,
drinking the cold
the rain heavy that built
and overflowed
too close to the mouth.
Sunlight breaks from a horizon
only in my closed eyes-
a memory of hazel-
water desert, brown gold
glass, hair dust
sand, and we just break apart
you're beautiful the way beautiful
is beautiful if its gone.
Somewhere a surgeon is removing
gloves
and even though those hands
were deep in the blood,
they are dry with a pale dust
that ends without ending.
This is the war.
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