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Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory.
It was
movement, that was the important thing.
How it must
have seemed like magic.
No one, at
the time, suspected that it would
be
entertainment. How could they know?
Now, a
century later, we are jaded,
our once
static lives enlivened to the point
of
restlessness, recklessness. We want
to see
someone hit, someone tortured.
We want to
see car wrecks so spectacular
they smash
in our very souls. And if handed
a poemor a
photographwe are apes.
Our hands
barely grasp them. In our veins the
blood jumps
and sizzles and pops. We
let the
poem fall and run into the streets,
shouting
revolution, shouting that we are free
from our
chains, as the birds are free, as
the
workers, now, are freed from their dull labors.
A Fairly Tale
Once upon a
time
the whole
world fell asleep
and dreamt
of another
way of
being; It was a long,
circuitous
dream of re-
construction. We dreamt to
recreate
the ways of men!
We dreamt
to once
more visit
all that is
best in us.
A brave new world!
And the
brave new world,
even in our
unadulterated dream,
quickly
returned to old and
tried ways,
equivalent
amounts of
love and murder,
sweetness
and craven greed.
It happened
again.
Again and
again and, you
know,
happily ever after.
I Only Want to Sing when All I do is Record
Perhaps I
want it to do too much,
the poem.
Perhaps
to desire a
celebration of all human
interaction
is a fools
foolishness. I want to tell you that
love, in
all its forms,
is the one
good thing. I want to say
that
without saying it.
I can sense
youre not listening, your
ear already
attuned to
the song of
the mockingbird, from
his bully
pulpit, from his high wire.
Night Mind
Awoke at 2
a.m. with
only the
dog for solace.
Stomach a
roil, head
light,
limbs weak.
The couch,
the TV, the
pinpoint of
Venus to
the East:
none of these
things
signified, mattered.
Now I
listen to Son
House and
try to gather
some
scattered attention.
A message
from an old
friend is
kind. I gingerly
reply as if
it is a butterfly.
By the time
the sun comes
up I am
drunk on solemn
aloneness.
I will take
the pillow
back. I will
attempt to
climb back
into the
now extinct night.
Something
was lost to
me,
something key.
I dont
have the wits to try
and find
it. Instead I
lie down in
someone elses
warmth, a
man nearly
like me,
save he despairs
so easily
at 2 a.m., and
he gives in
to hating him-
self just a
little for being
not well.
Not well at all.
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