Wednesday, October 15, 2014

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.





Sunday, October 5, 2014

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