CORPSES OF THE FLATLAND
Today I lost myself
To a great rivering flow of absence
Today I had plans but used all the momentum
I had at dawn to just do nothing, dry out
So when I rose I saw I was
An arid breeze in white sheet
A white apparition in overcast sky
It must have rained a bit
Just as the blackset dome slid back
And light transcribed the silverlined scripture
Whispering the succulent hello of morning
In the ears of bee clung flowers and into the mouth
Of garbage cans
The terrace is dilapidated from a burst pipe
It’s unusable
xxxxxIt’s painted damp
And every Tuesday the workers come to slowly repair it
I hear them cutting metal and it screams the same
mythic theme I hear from the bridge in the distance
Inspecting my balls with one hand
xxxxxxxxxxOne eye
I understand what it means to get older
To bend low and touch the ground
It is tomorrow and the sky is still streaked in silvertone
In some grove of cloud the outlines yellow
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxBecome white
Blend to blue as they duck out behind the new high rise
I watch until the night deepens then begin to write
He beats off again
He lifts some weight
He stretches out on the couch as the night solidifies and the sun
Is shooed away by our heavenly rotation
It is shooed away by the corpses in the flatland
They whisper to him, and way above him
A carrion fleet circles the flatland
They would like to become one with the shadows of the earth
There are the corpses he walks on at night
These are the bones he’s arranged
In the stark night these are the words he spells from those bones
Ancient words and stories are abundant and clear to him
Pluck one from the ground and strip it bare
Looking at that, what I’ve done, I ask
What have I done?
I lean from the desk and put my hands up
I feel guilty of murder
But we all murder some part of our lives
The day is new again
Outside the pot reeds toss themselves in the wind
The apricot dusk rises, melting into the galaxy
I shut my eyes
The day is new and I begin anew
Though now it is night and the wind is like a marathon song
It is relentless and long
He begins again
He has sent many letters to the world at night
He has pilfered the grave of many corpses of the flatland
He rejoices on the city limit
Where the trees catch the rain and the stars become
communicable
He has eaten the grass, the martin, the dead dear, the yawning oak
He has tasted the final breaths, repeated the rhythm of their final verse
All they do is talk
Those corpses and these ghosts
One is asking me for money
I say nothing
xxxxxI give nothing
Another wants my liver
I watch the sunrise slice light across the sky
I watch the late hour fade
They have told him in sleep that the effort is seen
When he begged from the outer rim of darkness to be born, did he know then
In the window he can see the river, its spume breaking on black jetties
In the window he can see the entire city
I guess that’s it
That’s enough for now
THE WHALE
Collecting sticks to draw godheads
In the sand
I came across a whale carcass
And loading up the rotted fat
In my mouth I
Flared my ribs to make room
And turned away from the sun
In guilt
Because I know
I know I am just a thing to be judged
And anything can be my God
If I eat enough of it
If I keep what has been used
Used it will revert to nothing
Excrement
And the sand will stain with
No tracks as the wind picks up
I must make new what is new
From vomit
xxxxxand hunger
So at night when
Just the bones stand
I can collapse near the seafoam
And begin to swim
Leaving behind a facsimile
A stonehenge
SILENT GRIEF
I have drawn up
xxxxxmany prayers
to a silent grief lying prone
in the tall outfield beyond my sorrow house
xxxxxxxxxxand in the evening when I’ve tilled these
poems,
xxxxxwashed the excess, seen it get up and stalk my love
xxxxxthe chickens:
leaving them cold and clean on the front step
something must compare
the days I’ve searched for it, the black hooded figure that denies examination, in the hot late summer days
xxxxxwithout finding shape or purpose to its existence
brandishing a scythe i spent afternoons swiping at it,
roving the pasture, noting the position of mars, until time felt mysterious and still,
xxxxxbumbling I gave in
to drinking water from the well
when all this field was turned over empty
xxxxxI dove into it
when you came in from the city and visited, you laughed at the state of things, said that sorrow wasn’t a proper name for it
i took you inside and though it lacked epicness and fortitude,
showed you the way my house was starving, a famine coming through sometime (i forget)
making the walls lean, the rodents and livestock corpses:
you left in the morning saying good luck with that
i called its name in the dusk and waiting shouted
xxxxxdeath!
yet nothing gave answer
not a grief
not the crow
perched on the meridian
finally seeing the shaven head of the land get brittle with fall and winter
xxxxxi left to chase you into the city awaiting
xxxxxon the train coming in from the white plains
the crops to rise again and make cover for grief to re-inhabit
for me to dally at the covering another summer
praying not for its face to be revealed
or its quality to be recognized
THE WAY THINGS ARE
When I speak,
Everything speaks.
The birds speak.
The trellis speaks.
The spinnaker speaks.
My childhood speaks.
The sun walks and talks, simultaneously
Humming and waving
On park benches and streets
Where I have suffered.
The walls of this room would speak too,
Regardless of if
Anyone could hear them.
It would be mostly nonsense
And rumors of course.
O yes,
Everything speaks.
Except that fucker
Death,
Who is silent as a Nantucket harbor
In the full moon.
(They speak
in gorgeous silver tongues.)
Even the dead,
Who are awkward in their ragged clothes,
Rattle in the earth
With their arms crossed,
Their drinks empty,
Whispering to one another
About the way things were.
O,
When we could have a real drink,
A real laugh, a real encounter
In the warm sun.
I can hear them
(And probably so could you).
I could ask them:
How many years do I have left?
Twenty,
Three,
Sixty,
An eternity?
I could ask them:
Does Death ever say anything?
Will he ever appear
In his tattered cloak,
Wagging a bone at me,
Yawning his skull
Saying
“Kyle,
I remember your lies,
I remember your life.”
Or is life,
For better or worse,
Endless,
Repeating,
Empty and insane?
Should I ask him
On my final day
Where I was before
I was born
Or
Where the wind comes from?
Where does the sound of my heart
Originate and
How able is it
To carry me onward?
Would Death point northward,
Up above the Manhattan sky
Into an everclear night or
Would he tilt downward,
And jangle with laughter?
My dog could speak
When it was hungry or hunting in the garden.
And when my mother prays I hear it softly spoken.
And when my father sees a change in season
A family of rabbits will emerge
From underneath the gazebo to greet him.
(They will say
“Thank you for letting us breed under your gazebo.”)
I know he hears things that speak true.
My father, your father, Death.
I know that if nature could stand up
Walk over and sing his favorite tune
It would.
And the wind,
Don’t get me started.
The wind will never shut up.
For billions of years
It will hem and haw like a loon
Until we are primal drunk and singular
Beings
Dancing in the moonlight
As one.
When I speak,
The way things are will speak.
And when nothing replies
I will wait and listen.
Do you hear me?
Do you hear me?