Anacreon’s Place

Dark hostilities, train timetables, our militarism has exceeded
our ability to communicate; the armies mobilize. Un-carved block,
rudimentary nova; there is a p2p blurb rippling through all these times
and yellowed molding charts in Oxford filing cabinets.

Life will begin there first, a gentle suppuration
of coils, angle, breadth, depth (chalk-like, the winged
children know it) – truth beginning when people decide there is
no above and below but just you and me, us, face to face.
The way it should be. And in ganglia of this, network, like
roots, and leaves.

Tremor beautifies fragrance, somehow
as though death and life were one
copulating on the hood of my Lincoln Mercury
beneath a full moon to the sound of Eddie
Vedder moaning in a soundtrack.

The elms surround us, scurrying secretive
the field mice who have no clue what we
even are but they are playing their part and we
see the scale and unlock the window.

Pain resounds in the ivory panels
of night. I am alone again with
Sibyl and we are facing anomie,
a hurricane devouring meaning;
perhaps the waves will dash us
to the rocks or hold us under until
we can’t breathe or the pressure
crushes us. Either way, we are
gnawing the edges of solitude
once more, my calloused soles
padding the tiles like rat scurryings
hoping that my heart will keep beating
and most of all that a check will
come, lest we perish utterly,
our groceries having spoiled,
netflix subscription
expired.

The day he peaked it was glorious so you’re wondering why the long face? Because the denouement no matter how sweetly, diaphanously, resonantly filigreed with symphonies of virtuosity and concavities of wisdom, will be diminution.

Like the returning exiles from Persia wept when they saw the rebuilt temple, because they remembered the grandeur of the original.

This scenery is psychotropic, so the moon’s phase affects the movements of armies and a butterfly’s last sigh crushed beneath a dump truck dabs the rain water off my love’s cheek, or sends the droplet tracing down the other way.

Through distances of culture and tradition
we stood here to bury a president. The service
was long, and the salute still resounds in my
ears because the whole show was for nothing.
They encoded the messages – elements
from the periodic table, distances
from the central star of the
planetary system, the gulfs of
emptiness between motes teeming
in the welcoming jet vastness
of stellar matrix; we stood and
did something else. Stepped up a little?
Onto the step-stool? Tried to elevate
ourselves one iota above the common
lot of sentience in the teeming universe?

Is this why we are bald?
Is this why we are bad?
The rooster forgets why
he crows in the morning:
to tell the rest of them
the shaking down will
not be pretty, and the
violence done will not be
to reputations.

A crown is prolonged
copper rather than gold -
do you think they’ll know?

On the green
a sheen as of
the unseen

fathoming monsters
the ungodly
take trollops
for weddings
in spades.

To bake
the undead
in all grains.

Forsaken
but pretending that you’re not
the detective story you’re a part
of, as though standing aside.
The fountain clears
deeps, and wins
scars.

The view of Kennedy
from the balcony is
stunning, the sugar
ties me into knots of
whispered dreams.

Everything she told me was true
and reflected some aspect of myself
I did not want to face but had to, or
stop living, period dot.

A nebula 600 light years
from the founding notion
of screwball carbinieris’
theories of how the current
state of Is shambled apart
to stalk theatergoers and
record their transactions,
without their ever knowing.

Is that eyeball in the sky
the being some humans
call God, or is your conscience
sending a telegram
from the refrigerator
called episteme?

I felt like the sky had fathomed me
and found me wanting. More of what?
Less. All the way into negation
positively stated, downward to
heights of glory. An emphatic,
maybe.

Topsy turvy world
my ups and downs
are like a frown turned
inside out – its color
is veritable, its appetite,
for feathers, and its
one wish: to get home
by the quickest way possible
because this incarnating thing
is really entroping the
old cowlicks.

To gush some humor - just a little laughter
Krakatoa-like from the soul crevasse -
I would give a pumpernickel rind. Those days
are behind me and in front of me, but the fog
chastens tightly the thin waist, and is not now.

The bitter taste of quinine on the tongue
when you lick the wax paper after
booting is the main thing, as
the asteroids collide into savage
sparks on the inside of your
eyelids and you feel the tonic
cant of hemoglobin awaiting
radiant marigold ecstasy the instant before
it actually hits, and then it does and you are sailing off
on Noah’s ark, ravenless, feeling
no pain, forty days’ box of rain.

And your roomate walks into the room and screams
because you passed out with the needle still in your
arm. You can’t understand why she’s so upset, since
you both do this all the time.

It is a brilliant system immolated with
the Viking chieftain; Gus keeps running like
the Energizer bunny. His theodicy
of mercy is a gas.

2.
A Finnish brooch found
in the coin hoard does not tell us,
Was this a Finn who went on a
Viking raid or a Viking who settled
in Finland? Was he enthralled
by the voices of two kingdoms,
or did he plant his own World-tree,
and watch the universe revolve around
the family thus made?

3.
He’s ashamed of the people he’s been,
lie after lie upon hackneyed mis-truth;
he can’t remember his own face -
when he stands in front of the mirror
he seems to glow blue, like a vampire,
or a ghost.

Data hits the back of her mind like cherry pits spat out the window of a school bus. The questions she posed when she woke up are close to being answered, and not to her satisfaction. How many years must the charade go on before the teams realize the “flag” they’ve been trying to capture is a figure of the referee’s imagination – something the aged patriarch needs to make himself feel needed – and the players are skinning knees and dehydrating for no reason at all, not even the fun of the game, not any more. As she walks home she considers that she should write a song about it, and put it up on Youtube.