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.
