Truth: Helplessness

There is a reason we wear winter coats.

There’s frost on the ground
And we’re not through October.
I know, I know
The world’s getting colder.

There is a reason we wear winter coats.

Truth: What is left for us these days?

What is there left to talk about now?
After you left me
In your Model-T-turned-SUV
That coursed through blossoming
Interstates, highway signs, overhead lights
Reeds in bloom.

What is there left to think about now?
After viruses ran amuck
From your mother and father
Across the veins where your lifeblood
Feasted on the half-life that called out to it
In green neon.

Where is there left to go now?
After your companions
Are all explored with cold steel
And miracle-machines that we saw
Tracing lines across the sky in wonder
Late at night.

There’s a pile of wood
And broken glass,
Embers flying from a long-dead fire
In the suburbs.

Kick it, stir the dormant carbon
Into some (any!) kind of motion.
But if stagnation has set in
Settle down, and
Just move on.

That’s all that’s left to say.

Deception: And I Thought I Heard A Girl Crying

Step in, slowly
The cloudy tungsten night
Still lingering

Heading home
You tell the machine
And it lurches upward.

But through the vignettes
In the crack in the door
I hear echoes from different times
Jump back
and forth
in the
elevator
shaft.

Little laughs from
Me, as a child.

With dreams out in orbit,
A self-portrait
With a camera around my
Neck.

The doors slide open
And it's the
Dim
Yellow light
Of the unfortunate
Present.

The camera slides off
My bed
As I crawl in.

Truth: Bliss and Helplessness

When the orange artificial fog
Doesn’t obscure my window,
I look down
To see the kids carving
Eight foot messages
In the ice.

Truth: American Desert

The frame twitches, and recomposes
Shadows on the wall of the apartment
Cast on posters, cast on television
On the news

Look into my eyes:
I’m tired of all the casual
Acquaintance talking
(and straight-line walking)

Everyone is so far away tonight
Distant.
Communicating by sonar
Beacons spread across
Neighbor states
Waves crossing above the
Amber waves.
The windmill spins in twilight.

Gray. All around. Gray.
In love with indeterminacy.
Something to peer into when
I can’t
See the eyes
Of my lover.

A plane flies overhead,
And the passenger side is empty
There’s a suitcase in the back
(an exit trap).

Send me perfumed letters
And I’ll sleep beside them.

Sonar.

Fields.

Vast. Corn crops. Of. Distance.

The great American
Desert.

Truth: Back And Forth Across The Giant

I step into the bus, quietly, unassuming, cell phone chatter suddenly dying in the shallow chasm of silence; until the casual acquaintances speak up and then it’s casual talking, casual talking until the casual talk slips and trips into the same chasm, deeper this time, headphones slip on and the music plays as headlight beams dance across my eyelids, little shooting stars falling, falling all of them down to the ground, just like me, coming down back to the place that they’ll call home, buried in earth, dust, astral debris and dinosaur bones. Keep a look out for UFOs in the countryside. The guy beside me chats on his cell phone maybe to his long distance lover, but I’m bitter because a barrier of courtesy stops me from connecting with mine over the cold but sweet country air, smelling of rocks and gasoline out on the tungsten evening highway. Gas station, gas station, gas station. We are only passers-by, red-white-black-yellow-green-blood-cells in the body of the greater good, the greater good stretching from Portland to the Cape of Good Hope, to Siberia and back to the happy hobo on 9th who loves boom-box tunes, bitter as they are to the rest of us. Screech. Terminal 1. Terminal 1, evacuate bus. Traffic. This is more than a wait, it’s a visualization of the world I am constantly a part of, tiny points of blue light recommend where the big blood-cell machines should couple with the even larger organelles, transfer the cells, and keep the machine alive. I filter in through the security checkpoint, non-confrontational, tao, but a girl I barely know is crying, and there’s not much I can do about that, is there? Searching, searching, am I a danger? Little beeps emanate from the invisible light machine that sees the world in two-dimensional cutouts. Bone marrow inside the laptops and iPods. My innercellularsense tells me to seek out a greasy double cheeseburger with bacon from the nearest processed food stand (in my case, a Burger King). I am a well-oiled little cell, give me my Dr. Pepper, wash down the French fries. It’s processed, a little upsetting, but tolerable and necessary, a reminder of my own complacent participation in the tough-to-follow switchbacks that lead up the hill of becoming a whole. Not whole, but one. Necessary evils are just that. One of the sleek silver Boeing 737-200s leaves, another comes in. This one, for the next hour, will be my home, my sanctuary in the very inhuman condition of being suspended thousands of feet in the air for lengthy times, moving at 100 times the average rate of speed at which I walk. I’m not walking now, not even up-and-down-the-aisles. Seat belt fastened, hurry us onboard, no time for checking if we can put the two halves together, sorry, but this basic knowledge will have to elude us for now; nevertheless, I manage to connect all the wires, build the machine. Engine roar. An uncomfortable memento of gravity. Then, nothing. Just air, and air, and air. The Great City unfolds below my eyes: God’s capillaries and veins and buses, cars, stadiums all beneath me. Pure gold coursing through His blood, biology of beauty, sparkles, grains of perfectly ordered symmetrical sand. The great spider web of our savior, our world, in light. I look at my reflection as a ghost in the view of the giant. The ghost smiles, still alive.

Deception: A Party

The birthday girl danced;
Scattered, stoic, disaffected.
Her party, her world, her deep drink
In her hand,
Pretension tending to guests.
I smiled in the back
And just thought of
Plane rides.

He’s passing in and out,
Laying on the couch.
Suddenly aware
Of the girl’s stare.
Look at me, momentary friend:
“Choose a different route”

Catching a glimpse,
A hole in my radar,
A girl I’ve never seen
Talks
Speaks
To me
In broken Spanish, slurred
“Solo hay cambios. una cosa cambia a ser una otra.
Todas las personas aquí también
¡Basta!
(and she fights back Sierra Madre tears)
¿Tu? No estas si mismo.”
I understood. But then, I wonder how
She knew me
So well.

Hustled.
I’m out the door.
Amicable, but cautious.
Friendly, but sober.
Unaffected, not Dis.
There’s a man hiding himself in the shadows
When the car turns the corner;
The mental state’s flowing from open wounds.
That one’s not me.

Not tonight.

She was confused.
It wasn’t us, but an
Unarrived stranger.
Now back away.

Slowly.