today, Heather Thompson
lost a dewdrop in a mayfly
shockwave to
a behemoth
footstep-world, an
instant an eternity
inside a frozen
orbit
dispatched and spun into enormity
She considers
that
life or death is a reformation of results
a thing ill-formed
by history
a future eye searching for uniformity
and seeing an inevitable
not uncertain
sweet start to something
instead become its bitter end
Whither
a destitute moon
cannot but produce lemonade
as regular as a wing. As the moon’s son
yet scours the offside sky
over the long white fence to dry
its eccentric orbit seems fractious
Though our supper fit with the
timescale
of the moonrise - I’m uncertain
this struggle is one of seeking
the safety of square numbers
In the never lands gravity brings
things
down into depressions to blur
each last time opening
like a striped umbrella in a
casual parade
lapses in the tide of all things
with a snootful of amazement
Fly me to the moon like a fiddler
over a lake that reflects
downscales
inevitably finding the least
common
where the buffalo wallow
Sock
85 million years from now
I’ll wear a hole in my red sock
-my masterpiece unwound
upon a world where birds
and dazzling needle works
peep past puzzled airplanes
rather than drive-by UFOs
flying smiles past my toes
as it darns itself skyward
Afraid of the Dark
Someone shut off the lamp so I reach to
restore my light
banishing swirling night, diminishing the
imps’ work
I forget that what I feel are fears only a
fool knows:
ideas not things, spectral not actual, inside
not out
I spy my own long shadow before sunrise in
my childhood
or I imagine a phantom alive in a waking
fugitive dream
and a chill streaks out of my soul into my
extremities
its instant shock bulb flash impulse
straightens me
Monsters of the Id chase me off of my Forbidden
Planet -
where Leslie Nielsen and Anne Francis cower
in the tempest
of someone else’s invented lonely eons of crashed
empire
as a forlorn light shoulders spare,
infinite perspectives
I see them where they are not. Werewolves,
panthers, stalkers -
they who go strangling outside tonight
sinister and strange
A cool palm descends from heaven on my
shoulder, Daphne’s whisper
like fingertips says, Go back to sleep, stop
dreaming, hush now
The room defocuses and light fills my inner
corridors asleep
as dreamless I fade into a gray light
inside me calm and brave
I FELL LIKE A BRICK
I FELL LIKE A BRICK
FROM THE PODIUM
THE
GANGWAY
THE
ESCALATOR
THE
OLD WATER TOWER
THE
BLEACHERS
THE
BRIDGE
NOT
EVEN SPINNING
THINKING DEEPLY
SMOKING
RATIONALIZING MY FEARS
GRINNING
PROTESTING NOR SHOUTING
THE WIND WAS EVER WHISTLING
THROUGH
MY SHIRT SLEEVES
MY FINGERS
MY OPEN WINDOW
MY PASSPORT LANYARD
MY HEAD OF HAIR
MY INNERMOST THOUGHTS
I FELL LIKE A BRICK AND HAVE NOT STOPPED FALLING EVER SINCE
Another Day Not Doing Things in the Void
I'm doing what I have to do:
what I do and when I falter
in a location unknown. What is it
that I do - how should I scrounge
when I can't learn.
No boss can tell me or do my job
Is it new that I am told what to
do
and I do what I have to do
not what I rush or what I don’t
I do it and filter it if I
don’t
fluster myself with something
I know how to do - fixed or
moving
To be met first not in the
second
to know what's going on
but probably not
Can I say if I can’t tell
what to do
and rustle the folder
that by break time holds nothing
I do what I should do
in the first place and wind up
not to do in the second place
or grumble of the fodder
which gets or doesn’t
get processed
I do not do what I am told
which they saw was fitter
over pilfering like a pilgrim
what to do - I don’t know
what
to do I don’t do and I do
I do not – this is what to do is
man standing on his head in Union Station
thinks he sees frontier outlaws,
cattle rustlers
confidence men, ladies of the
evening, Cicero gangsters
aldermen, church officers, bank
presidents, union bosses
school children, mothers, fathers, grandparents,
space
aliens thinks he sees Chicago Bears
beating Minnesota 13-0
air molecules seeming to move
toward him
stand still in migrating slants
of sunlight
as passengers pass by pass between
wander and weave wave and warn
themselves
numbed by daily routines passersby
seem to suspend in hivelike
activity
missionary while stationary in
motion
both here and not now and not
looking in and out to other times
other places on the line and off
as the words inside him whisper
the Burlington Northern welcomes
you to Chicago’s Union Station
announcements ring out now
arriving, now departing
feet, trolleys, trains, and taxis
on floors, streets, and tracks come
and go
coming and going doors whoosh open
and shut
his memory seems to fade away his
competence is irrelevant all around
him
dates, years, hours unglue from the
Now
it’s a rather large small he is
beginning to see and un-see
a future before him and a past
behind the here and now
always somehow trying not to try
there where the marble stairs
outline the wooden benches beyond
splitting infinities in the vast
mind of the observer being observed
Bouquet
In streets and alleyways into doom
on the sidewalks end time rumors
bloom in bars, bodegas, clubs
My prom date catches the bride’s bouquet
and in the corner of my eye I see the Reaper
faraway, swinging his scythe
at me
