Thursday, April 8, 2010

In some odd way it

is intimated

that moments are preserved

by painting them

to canvas

film

or darling little

binary packets.


Images are made

continuous

and etched

under the sun

and the moon

and the table lamp.


The myth of preservation

is itself

a myth

born from lies

about truth.


With a yellow flare it claims

that a photograph,

skillfully taken,

will whisper

heavy-tongued

into an unsuspecting ear.


Faint wisps of raven-worshipping hair

were emphasizing the bones

that under cloud-white skin

told bold tales of barely

hidden skeletons.


There is a chronic inflammation of the soul

which Pascal

(no great anatomist)

has placed in the midst

of every man;

and presumably every woman,

although he didn’t specify:

it devoured Nietzsche from tail to head

and left gashes in Keats,

made Vonnegut ask horrifying questions in public

and told bad jokes

to Thompson

from the depths of drained shot glasses.


He said that they were searching for God.


Her eyes had the look

of the doe caught unaware

in the early morning.

Her iris,

with the palette

of Gilgamesh’s Hell,

was standing as a tantalizing

query

as to what

the morning mirror

shed its light

upon.


She was looking

elsewhere.

Out in that distance

were the worries

that die in the spring air

when the land rises up

to choke the empty threat

of snow.


It is

impossible to tell

if she is

full of breath

or dying of a hollow chest,

but perhaps she is neither

and is instead

laying at an odd angle

for repose.


This dart of intimacy

finds its own end.


In the morning birds will

sing outside of my window

at the sight of the sun,

or else

the airy touch

of one another.

What do they know that we don’t know?

What are they singing of?


But you cannot take a picture,

with point-and-shoot or purist’s rig,

of grass weaving itself to the wind,

or old warriors nodding their heads

at the rare few who have managed

to live through these many years,

and say that you have given

the story of what went on before.


Although we know this, we expect

them to explain

the crushing death of a nation

with a boy,

face bloodied,

being pulled from under rubble,

or else the legacy of murder

from above

in fields where

only children and mothers

found their graves.


She is digging salt in the world beneath a world.

She is in the bed of a man she’d like to burn.

She is saying that she’d rather not.

She is sleeping in the marshes and waiting for a ghost.


What does she know that we don’t know?

What does she know

that we don’t know?

Which dark secrets

has she laid under stones

in the shadows?

Does she know why she’s alone?

2 comments:

  1. Thought-provoking, rich with images. Every stanza, particularly my favorite, the fifth, are as strong as the last.

    I enjoyed reading this.

    ReplyDelete