Tag: poetics

guise and dolls

crow5 Comments

ah, matryoshka
how perfect your round face
how full your figure
no one would know
anything is wrong
as long as you
keep your back straight

your chiropractor must be very good

but slip out of alignment for just
one
second
and the jig is up

everyone can see that you’ve been
cut in half
severed at the waist

what were they trying to discard–
the upper half?
or the bottom?

and when you split open
what will we find?
your inner child?
your trauma body?
or have you burned through those
with therapy
and repression
and now your shell is just that?

stare at the clouds at sunset
watch the color drain
the threat and promise of night is fulfilled

something something yesterday

crow4 Comments

hidden from view where i sit
in the sun with the sleepy cat
i hear shouts from young men
playing a game
soccer or volleyball
there are courts nearby
this is not unusual
yet something about the sound
and the color of the sky
hit’s me like a cosmic flyswatter

and i am ten

there
back there i can smell the blue sky
and taste the angry bee-buzz of
remote controlled airplanes
in my mouth like live marbles
the copper penny blood coin
heads up on the sidewalk
under the sole of my bare foot
i am there
it is wet mowed grass summer

and
and
and
my heart feels crushed
when the smell of the man-made lake
reaches me here across all
this time
this ridiculous calendar falsehood
because i am still there.
right there
barefoot in the grass
smelling hot gravel
the alyssum taste of summer
in the back of my throat
but my bones
my bones
taste like old gunpowder

failed gravity

crow2 Comments

i have imagined my gravity failing

it’s not what you think

if what you’re thinking
is your feet disconnecting
from the earth
as your lead-heavy bones
float helium-inflated heavenwards

you will be walking
fallen behind the dog
during the walk
the rhythm of the toenails
on concrete
is someone tick-tock flicking
sun bleached vertebrae
resting just below your skull

you feel it
then
right there
a sudden dissolution
as you come apart
not like in the movies
where some magic spell turns you
you into dust
that dissipates on a breeze
blowing from the space-time you once occupied

it’s much deeper
more personal
because you stay you
as you come apart
skin cells, hair follicles,
hemoglobin, nerve tissue,
pasty blobs of greasy fat
in your gut and in your brain.
–and smaller still–
organelles, membranes
mitochondria, tightly wound strands
of dna unbraiding itself
proteins and elements and atoms
and bosons and gluons and quarks
each quanta impossibly separating
coming apart

there’s no explosion
in this failure of gravity
no small pile of ashes or dust
no spark
no chilling sound effect

you’re just there
completely in pieces

too small
to see
to put back together
you expand whitmanlike
and assume all space and time

and there is no heat death
because there was never heat

leaving a few feathers behind

crow4 Comments

i wing my way
over the stubble field
the grain shaved
from the earth
few kernels left for scavengers like mice
or me
and come to rest on your shoulder

you don’t greet me
with words
but the breeze animates
your straw head
and it looks like you nod

friend–I say–
friend, my visits to you end today
there is a horizon that calls to me
and the field has been harvested
and soon you will descend this pole
borne away by hands of flesh and blood

i wish i knew what would become of you

the wind makes you shrug
as if the question doesn’t concern you
perhaps it doesn’t

to the west the sun melts into the horizon
whispering my name
or was that you
speaking so low that I doubt
all of my senses
even the common one

consider the snail

crow4 Comments

you think he moves slowly
but the atoms and subatomic particles
that comprise
his mucosal turd-like body
move at the speed of light
he is constantly flying apart
like an atom bomb
splitting, dividing
burning the oxygen
out of the sky
but you watch and feel sorry
for how long it takes him
to get across the sidewalk
motherfucker, he’s already where
he needs to be
he’s fucking everywhere
and so are you
and because of the illusion of solidity
you pass right through each other
without even touching
without so much as leaving a grease stain
just like in all your star trek wet dreams

eclipse

crow2 Comments

how strangely things line up

the total eclipse of the sun

the guy who slips in front of you
for the checkout line that has the cute checker
and his basket is full
and you have only two things

the lady at the butcher counter
who doesn’t bother taking a number
and she is buying for a birthday party
and texts her husband what to get

or the frazzled minivan mom
who loses the parking spot because
someone takes it before the other car finishes backing up

how much is the light dimmed
how much does the temperature drop
how the tidal forces grip and twist the skull
and ribcage

with the dark side of moon
gazing fully at the glory of an unobstructed sun
will the moon remember how to move