Idioteque
The divisions are what we will do newly in this world,
Both from heaven torn away, people with trees.
Stills tender an environment, this one’s new,
The park cold, a child was being taught
An apocalyptic speech, “but if you can see
Your breath, there is no yard or whip.”
More softly a custom falls to the table,
Immediately said god and they rest in the parted.
He launches into his defense of why he had to
Take land from the sea, I can’t even make out his words.
Snow launch, a child was being taught
Stay under your sweater, gain the shore for us
We will cover it without being visible, god said,
Let us on to it. I thought up a lie where
I fell beside the trumpets in the sand,
Authentic, opposed to the municipalities’
Vote to destroy what can destroy, including
I would destroy what cannot destroy, a desert,
Unmoving coral, men like shelves in their tents
To block the flying wind. All day
Painting didn’t have to, it could have said
My voice goes after, royalty in descending,
Earth order and our being centered on it
And dying brown bills count each other
Chanting on invisible walls. Others
Aren’t walls they’re architecture. Safer to wait
Out the body, prudent is why I’ll say.
Including huckleberries, misshaped, in a night,
Next day the field off which we will depart,
Skiffs we’ll see, another government. Blue and veiled,
Said what is hidden will remain hidden
And was brought to market and displayed
Before whom, I felt calm air, I was free,
I was afraid, they were sent out mornings,
We were freezing, it was sometimes beautiful,
The blue and veiled. Not in our right mind, had to be,
The sea will sleep upon itself, it was early morning,
We were up in the grass, it was cut low enough
The girls’ ankles showed, clouds on the ground,
I read more than I had, I had to keep starting,
It was a book of colors around it a building.
Both Sides
An extended terrain of all.
Ah! It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine,
It is midnight. It’s raining, it’ll be fine.
The day of glory has arrived, next a truism
Of a truism, modern and flat
Against a wall, wearing a watch
With a black band, in a room, in autumn,
In pines advancing.
Hope Mountain
No less ice sheared my face. It was
my face that had discovered, then disowned,
sea. Could not stand, in its twitch, waves
could not be stilled or sheared to sand.
A scuttling nomenclature, its frothy
bits, in which I stood disarmed and posed
among some growing buds behind me.
White on my back, a white glowing.
A color entrained by minuscule
light—soon size of dream is enough.
Early it is enough, white sand,
no less the sky. The sand covers more. Its
availability, false graininess,
covers more—is washed more away.
You traveled from another place, another
beacon, the place you are, are reading
from. Which is the same, this
sand. Your head restrained by dew and its reminder.
A morning comes. A morning comes the plight,
shakes robins from the tree’s attrition
and then carefully is gone. Pushed from the
shore. Your wet hands. Later the land again
received. No less than salt. And she turned back.
How many times has the story been read?
The human is capable of looking
at another’s back and marching. It was warm
there. The crumbs bothered me. I said come in
and I fucked. An open pocket, a rain
on me. How I lasted. Joining the look
with grass. Enough for a hill or mound
less above than below the ground. Pulling
through sand I found it, plastic, like a painting
late style, as painting always was,
of sitting beside a pool, splashing its
face, sounding out its face. Alone among the
air, or its repose. A calm scene, middle-
focused, self-aware. Blinking at transports,
the trains or films waiting, following and
carrying. Sun made the trains, miniature,
sent the bodies, next to coal.
Aside the city I declined and wept.
The day flashed. The problem,
impotence, was flesh. The prior generation
too much of flesh, which wanted repetition
of love, not its outcry. Then on
the sand, crying, for impossibility,
and the man standing back above on
the hill. Wringing his breath. The grass then
looked down greener, subtler. Then flourishing
the springtide, volumetrics released back up.