A Hunch

Unchained, the shoulders expand,
drop the boulders on the phantom's
feet breathing on your nape. You:
older, vigorous, yet new.
Look: the horizon seething,
although, surely someone
must have seized it. Already
a native sweats, freezes,
thinks occasionally, sometimes sneezes.
And his father worked the soil.
No. His father barely toiled, it was
his grandfather, if that.
The ground's intact, just like here.
Your shoulders only fill with fear
of running on your treadmill again,
to flee, as you have been.
You've been kind, but it's been done.
You've been wet, and you've been numb.
After you sneezed, you narrowed your
reddened eyes and decided to vacuum.
You thought during that, and after that you
stretched to feel life pulsing, to try to feel the power
of your arms in full swing.
It was convincing.
you confirm that by spying
around, you groan, or make any sound to lie.
Can you turn back though? How would you know then, if I
saw you tap your toe? But I, too, show.
Ennui is the twitch of knee
You can see that I, too, movement feign.
That I hunch from a cold neck, unchanged.


11/23/09

Blindness

I wish I could have not seen
her tumble down to darkness,
for after that there was (it seemed)
only silence as she stumbled over
the tracks in her drunken fog to reach
the dim lights of life above wailing to her,
although that could have been the
train (or rather its breaks screeching)
patiently expecting to inhale its
customary load and spit them out
according to their wishes. But
I wish I could not have seen her
body on the news later because
they could not (obviously)
lift the train right then and there
to get her out from under it,
and so trailed it anxiously,
waiting on the machine to
finally excrete it.
I did not see on the news what
happened to the train, but I assume
it was (naturally) too much of a hassle to
clean the blood off of its stomach.


11/20/09

Taking Down The Painting

chew this
Judas was foolish
soon as the deed was through with
Mr. Iscariot exited stage left
abstract and moot as the moon is
truly useless
our hero returned while
Judas turned slow right then
back left
bereft of all for all he reft
eaten up and powerless

now here's a mess
I confess I've gnawed to death my phantom limb
great betrayer of all of us
drubbing Judas the little dunce
drawing life from olden rust
it snickers offstage and sings thus

I'm the wound in the wall!
I've left you a line,
just tug it to call!

it pulls at the spine
in its loneliness
it misses a friend's caress I guess
lonely spider wire
I bite your silk but too soon come
the fangs and then
the abscess
why gnaw this
why tear rip slit or saw this
it's no use
after all it's only a noose to take off
it's loose

now silent but o it hung,
so it sung
the scar tissue now fading as
dust covers the wall anew
so at last entombing you

view our room
a great graveyard of the past
here rest tired wings and broken masts
we will flutter
we will sail but will not last

do not ask when why or who
sow your seeds among the dead
walk instead among the few
content you'll grow as others grew
drift and row
without rue.




11/17/09

A House Built on Burial Grounds

you and I are not alike
ruin, I and
you alight
you usurp the
lunar light
doppelganger,
you efface the beauty
of the night
you incite the graying passing
of my light
the incipit of new life is
blighted by the phantoms floating
in and out of waking dreams
stabbing through my memories
smirking on the black veil of my
eyelids squeezed
I wish to be blinded when you haunt me
leave



11/04/09