A Turning (for Kirk Hauptman)

"If it makes money, it’s good." 

As children we knew this was absurd.

We knew this afloat on our backs
Free and drifting 
For the first time alone
In cold Lake Michigan in sunlight.

They said --
The standing lamp broadcasting
Ghoul-golden light as it was pronounced -- 
To go against this  

Would cause us to be penniless
And to starve.

We accepted this 

And gradually went mad.

Years pass
As a pale car fade
Into the eastern haze and
We sense now A Turning.

We sense that we may now recall 
What we knew as children.

Sometimes I hear within the chambers of my skull

Metal girders creaking and bending,

Wailing under the weight of something impossible.

Sometimes I can see in my mind’s eye 
The beginning of the fall of a building,

And then the mid-air pause that it holds 
Before it collapses inward upon itself
In a whoosh that is both rapid 
And traceable in real time.

Kingdom of Soot

In the Kingdom of Soot

Where the beggars lie

You can fly like a lemon

Through a hole in the sky

Wander like an onion

Past the broken moon

Sleep in the shadow

Of a wooden spoon

In the Kingdom of Soot

With your ragged wand

You can draw a circle

On the black silt pond

Eat your jambalaya

From a cracked, tin bowl

Holler at the window

Like a blind black mole

Well I saw Emma

She was wringing out the wash

Hunched like a rabbit

In an old tan cloth

Pouring out the water

Tortoise shells

Knocking on the doors

She was ringing all the bells