With myrtle and listenability
I undertake the words of the prophets
Memories relapse in an unhealthy fashion
Man the forgetful
this rectangular mouth
compromises loftily
The Moons harsh splendour
boasts its specious context
as marigold and beam
sway across my October windowsill
like salt peter cleansing the pelt
truth is unburdened
Soft squish of boots,
gurgling footprints following
a plodding tread.
The riverbed speaks
as it enters the mud
writes also, a drainage of rivulets
cursively signs the rivers name
over and over again.
As my dark form appears
sleepy herons wing-beat air
What am I doing here,
here where twilight shades loom
so damp and charcoal gray?
Yesterday, rowing a boat
a liquid sunlight upon the water,
seeing this nook of land,
the way it was so like an aperture,
a place emerging and opening
a piece of hinterland
where a person could walk
on its melding surface.
At this darkening hour
walking to where a skiff was yesterday
looking out from this small inlet
only to spy another opening,
an elemental herons dreamscape
not noticed before.
All has opened as far as it can today.
A 357 magnum Champaign bottle
brings down a wild boar – clean kill.
Giddiness is inherently fizzy,
dizzy possibly even deadly
we have machines to monitor
how open a person can get
and still live on with those
ever expanding vesicles.
inside them.
Returning to the ‘opening’ theme
the very air has blossomed,
blown itself up and outwards,
and I wonder how far the sky
or an effervescent atom can open
before shooting off
into the heart of a passerby
and if she or he survives
will he or she continue to open
the way a starfish might
in a fluorescent splash of moonlight?
Yet all openings must fray at their edges,
rims and verges fragment,
the circumference cannot hold,
hollow points expand
into multiple exclamation marks,
but when we have opened,
when we have opened all we can
does the wilting then begin
or is there a gun
of a much higher caliber
for us to be fired from?
This Grand Opening
I attended: Scene
McDonald’s, Moscow,
Queue extended over
Under Pushkin Square
(Some saw the poet’s
Spirit rise and sniff
The air). No
Royalty to cut
The ribbon, courtesy
Of Comrade Lenin,
Just some shivering,
Hatless Business Guys
With Cheeseburger Eyes,
Cutting Communism down
To size with French Fries,
Beating back
The Russian Winter
With Hot Apple Pies.
Army,
Church,
And
Jail.
Three jobs
Are posted
Every day,
Every week,
On TV,
News papers,
Wall ads,
On Fairs.
Three manufactures
For packing
Death.