I.
The window opened
permitting the cold in
to permeate those sleeping
Under blankets placed
anonymously during the night.
Ones with plagues unseen;
spread
without symptom
Where were you (when
those breezes carried
down a plastic bag, then up again,
then reminded us with its
absence in crisp ancestral streets,
that it had been forgotten)
to help describe?
The ritual
II.
Against the grain
Between the rows
Subjected to the same winds
Symbol of our times
Zeitgeist in a smoky cinema
Hatching an all-embracing arm
Against the grain
and between the rows
a healthy bloom
hatching an all-embracing arm
for the workers in the field
to shave
against the grain
between the rows
apart
pollinating the winds
with that new style
refined taste
hatching an air guitar
a product line
a symbol of someone’s time;
where was I?
III.
Doubt has yet to perforate the
solace of denial, wound tight on this
drum of cyclical motives that resonates
with monotonous proficiency.
Dancers cast their shadows into the
cavernous well of perilous thought and yet the
edifice of an impeccable dance stays intact.
And when the screen and frequencies
broadcast the solid color in honor of
the monolith, whose boundless
reaches touch not even the pigments which
depict it,
What of the chaos below, the lifting off,
and the reserved life that awaits—
The disillusionment of those too old
for simply dietary comfort, and
too young to have gluttonized their rites
through a crumbled archway in Spring,
In a land of warriors-turned-bronze-in-memoriam?
IV.
I will tell you this once more before I recoil:
how you were born in a bull market
the boy in the housing bubble
and how the best saw it coming and
did nothing but profit.
how we’re alone in a spacial way
on the plains of Texas where
old bovine bone crush particulate dust
sat undisturbed a million fiscal years or more.
how the time you was given was a
slow boat to China with a leaky pontoon
and in this life who could never ask for more.
how some old hangin’ trees got perennial plaques
and some others give daily shade,
which was a harder place for Jonah to sit
than in the belly of the beast, but he did.
how some folk’ll count your words
and some your works but ’til you don’t count
for somethin’ then neither never musta
amounted to nothin’, blight that you are
on your best intentions.
After the abdication, when suffering
relinquishes its authority.
When, apart from suffering, we don’t know
the name to put on the grave.
When we’re rummaging. Rummaging through
copper, wax. Lost John. Lost John.
He outrun a message on the telephone.
Long gone. Long gone. Lost John.
while we’re rummaging through cylinders
in your grandfather’s barn
won’t somebody open a window
to let out this poor wasp?
And as for you, whose attentiveness frightens me:
I’m cultivating flakes of skin on the phonograph
grease stains on the glass
rust on the plowshares
and ashes on the dashboards.
This should tell you something
of my legacy.
