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

Missing Pieces

Feb 13

https://youtu.be/sH55QzlHHdY

Flowers

Flowers For Leslie, Yellow/Blue/Orange
https://www.antgallery.org/current-community-show-1

Astraea

Flower

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.

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.