Friday, April 20, 2007

We the living

we the living have no way to determine
what our lives will mean (whispered)

you who read this (shouted) shall
trace significance in our legacy of

depleted uranium shell casings
camoflagued ammunition banks
electronic records of blood donations
wildlife preserves and shorline trails
quadratic equations in ball-point pen
mercenary training camps, militia
uniforms costumes marching bands
videographed pornography
networked skillshares, bondage
bracelets, lucky charms, all

these records of longing and lust,
violence and revenge, a compendium

vast as arctic refuges, shrunk as
polar ice caps tracked by satellite maps
indiscriminate as hurricanes,
irrefutable as tidal waves, and yet

complicit as drug inforcement agencies
in small-arms trades to "rogue states"
rogered over the radio from
security contractors who wear the
bullet-proof vests that enlisted soldiers,
who signed up for diplomas and received
a court-martial for desertion,
cannot acquire through the budget battles,
confirmation hearings, and commision reports
of yesterday's news.

That's us.
Yesterday's news.

And yet -
we who know this is no time to die
shirk at work to collude in
unformed doctrines of educated consent
to learn how to live, love, promise and forgive
in this interplay of half-truths,
and a slower one at that.

We are not born to die, though
we all must; we are born
to decide what to do,
choose how
to make it new.

(begin again)

After Prague

We have exceeded our cells,
litter the hotel in the evening,
not to be conflated with freetrade.

The nucleii differ in form and function:
iron tubes chain forearms, block
unfolded parabolics of inflatables.

Reassembled devils congregate as an infatuated evolution of money betrays the transparency of the organized leaders, in a limit to the interpretive event, our voice:

again choked, again sold -
billy clubs against thorax,
a reticulated double-helix
of pre-recorded protest;

"Don't yell into the megaphone,"
he pleads, "for applause will be
in no way comprehended."

When hatchbacks explode at checkpoint barricades,
a repeated correlation -
of transmitted riddles and unreported body counts -
accumulates as inherited traits compile laws of genetic continuity,
pick up hitchikers on the corner of odd and even
mutate and revolt;
bold and specific,
vague and insinuant

chants scatter under tripod crutches.
Cells disperse, from definite shapes into
scattered coagulates, against which
horseback riders collide, fracture limbs.

An insistent forgetness concerned with
tornados
takes definite shape before it
dissipates in the end

the descent

microrevelations

i know this makes me
less than human -

episodic as incubation
obvious as war -

"I will not in my own person
violate the dignity of humanity."

Of course, the costumes are real.
The instinct of self-preservation is strong.

i am the plaything of the monsters.
the organs are greatly rearranged:

migratory birds and social instincts
patterns of demise and exalted motives

the subjects beneath our stories
hear a terror of scorn or infamy

progenitors who loom and feed as
we seize the opportunity to sleep

microrevelations

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

jane doe

in this clumsily-built democracy,
our cement warehouse bunks
will be the un-ministered tip of

what we did right.

unforseen invitations to build
kitchen-sink luck-light harbors
where we turn away from

smoky streets of thousands

to return to the trouble when
denied imprisonments clamor;
new names walk the walls -

"climb what you think," they say.

we assaulted the compromise,
swept the shattered glass,
replaced the news-stands.

there were places we didn't belong.

discipline

moisture retained in chemical attacks:
breath is useless, and yet we consider
lemon juice in a handkerchief

he rushes the carpet beds
what he can take, he takes
love with the lid still on

in the end, the natural history of
frustrated protests create many
public lives to fit inside our wilds

we appear in few theories, but
less stories than songs, so far;
we will release our memories

Monday, April 16, 2007

landlord

she never spoke unless to order,
to proclaim,
to announce,
or denounce.

she lived in the single room
with an unlocked door
atop the winding staircase
of the rusty dusty fusty musty
house,

where cattle barons escaped
summer thunderstoms
in centuries past,

behind which army engineers
lopped off the top of a hill
to construct their water pump,

hills where conflagrations hid
escaped convicts from the
county jail across the river,

water that ran from mountain granite to orchard canals.

she slept atop a dead cat for two weeks

this was the first landlord that i remember,
and she called her employees
her 'men'
as if she was proud to have learned
not to call them 'boys.'

she spoke of them only to boast
of her close association with them.
it's to her that i owe this lisp.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

pianists

we think like this:
hands outstretched and
history outside fingertips

we have a rule
about past and pieces:
any of your stories contribute

to our plays against amnesia
we bring oil and dust
as a piecemeal inheritance

when our injured children
strangle themselves
we scream beyond thumbprints

a miscommunication

laid off from the hillside plant

we pause before the
broken embryos, without
pride, a slight intimacy

shifts from, "Gee,
I like this drive train,
this gear shift, this night job,"

to "thirst cuts our strings,
necks as hungrier fables for
two year-olds without sweaters."

this is the difference between
pornography and exploitation,
love and poison:

we show signs of shyness
when we work without genocide,
or pick up a new trick.

Friday, April 13, 2007

If

If the moistening of solid bodies
turns us into each other's arms
as rocket explosions shatter official podiums
hours after the governor announced productive dialogue,
the provisional resolution, shouted in crisis,
shouted with pleasure, will prove to be
only a competitive bid for attention.

In its objective character, pornography
is quite similar to newsreporting;

the motion of the juice
colludes in the animal body
to produce copyright evidence:
this genome shall split,
this metataxis shall fail.

We've done it all too often:
sunburnt torsos scar,
shrapnel worms way
out of scalp, out of mind.

run away

he sailed in the navy
she ran away from Texas
he swam to shore
homophobic grandfather
(exactly - you've got it)

she never came back
that's what they say

a culture, et cetera,
of cotton - which seeds
cut her hand

a child in the fields
an orphan at four
watches trains roar

nursery ditties
plain language
memories of
dinners and

sensory starvation

it hurts when i swallow
rusted screen doors
against porch shadows
of undocumented relatives

five hundred thousand -
enough for a brigade
of Latino soldiers -
warrant more than
three minutes
in this outline of
human existence

and yet, a tirade's never enough:
gotta switch the reference catalogue
to recognize the corn oil celebrations
a hand against the face
radio games
as we run
away

we've been listening

we've been listening to learn how to
take up the stones to sharpen them.
we get these ideas in our head;
how cut the plantations from history?

not often can it be done
without suddenly being pedantic;
when it works best, this emergence
from a singular amnesia...

michael's paint dries above -
can you stand it? -
angelo provides encouragement
for a frescoe's repetitive despair.

we leave the chapel, unresolved
to our salvation, dedicated to our
a) b) c) - doesn't mean you
can't escape the museum of

Jurassic technology - words swim
around and around slavery -
we didn't read what we couldn't see
how open eyes in the dark?

some already know
some can't forget
we are many
we are one

so they say.

make us laugh

hundreds of thousands of people
killed the fast shadows who thought

we'll change the response
we'll include the voices

all that and more
we've promised

the death tolls have reached
interviews burning for years

lawmakers were eating failure
the security plan should not

talk. talk. identify. make us
laugh.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

ahab

that empty chart of a man -
night shocks at the heart of his philosophy -
nothing breaks between him and now.

how can we index the price of his direction,
catalogue the invisible evidence
which he has cost us?

how confirm the mass murder
centered in his plate, how refuse
to partake of the carnage on which

he bids us to dine?

concilatory in tone,
admonissions against
falsified admissions,

he presents us with
sequined sea-deep dresses
to wear at his banquet.

litanies of metaphorical subsistence
fails adequate partisanship,
falls short of resistance sufficient

enough to discount this heritage, as
from the Pequod to the Crawford Ranch,
mesquite fires sink this presidential ship.

Friday, April 06, 2007

consider taking up our case

the left tibia
hospital ward
living in Russia
voluntary quarantine

television radio computer bed
shower spit-wash
booking number

***

we cry a lot
we have no windows
our natural light is blocked

we have no hot water
we have a basin of water
a washcloth

a room without guards
without handcuffs or chains:
consider taking up our case

***

we are not in a position to assess
public health risks from
reactionary ignorance
can you respond?

we walk around
homeless shelters
prisons
breathe in our mouth

what rights do we have?
state it correctly:
"Da."
Not as easily transmissible.

***

confine us
allow us
force us

we are
we is
prevalent

one out of every person
has us


***
***

watch lists

Let us see what our statistics on insanity indicate:

Watch lists downplay the results of surveillance tapes in hotel lobbies
where an ear at the key-hole nudges a shoulder-launched H-bomb.

Down dark narrow corridors with walls painted battleship gray, former FBI agents work for a long, embarrassing promise waged on the use of death while others want to lower fault on the equation - "step up to the task" is to "speed up the penalty" as "conditions in Central American factories" are to "breastbones fractured and reunited."

They're not doing us any favors.
Eyewitnesses say coalition forces killed twenty-one civilians.

Can you make it any more clear?
Has any one of those people who decry the fundraiser
actually lived in a homeless shelter?

You can often find a summary of confirmed unemployment in a second Holocaust.

Observe:
lawmakers have hinted
a favored economy
stresses nuclear fire.

General stress, in this case is not a special solution. Rational thought may not save the world, but military uniforms led to "We're in jail, dude." Each object radiates "one day you will bless her" even though opposite distance erupts when inconvenient apparitions, seen crossing the lake.

This is not the first time.
The uncoordinated attacks will return,
a cascade of repeated mistakes
while spokesmen deny responsibility.

A pillar of snow
melts

vacation photos

vacation photos operate in the same manner as
consumer frauds, a common practice of termination

statements look at lists, present threats to disrupt
eighty-five year-old retired science teachers who

practice corporate common law marriages without
licences -typically, we aren't allowed to infiltrate

acorn bread grindstones under granite cliffs where
surveillance vans alert police: "long-hairs upaginsthwall"

it strikes me. it exposes us. anytime we're in a family,
anyone can take a picture, as long as it doesn't cross

a line. a network. a phone. a look. a look. fairly
restricted. broken research talks to one of the

wastelands