On The Harmonium

My canceled flesh waits,
the harmonium warms up.
A crowd of memories in the
walls wait, they are the
ghost salon.

It plays so that the sleeping
country may awaken,
and find it has missed
a whole metamorphosis,
a dead lifetime.

Shed skin, dirty clothes
wriggled up on the floor-
the harmonium warms up,
our ghosts wait to hear
a song so blue.

The empty country sleeps,
asleep through winter,
and in spring,
she gathers Demeter
to play a song

on the harmonium.

Letters From The War: One Red Evening

Our war was different. There were no trenches dug
In bloody mud, no bombs, no barbed wire.
Alone, we'd wander the dirt roads to no avail,
Driven by distant sounds and a vauge sense
That we should continue.

One red evening we marched through a wrecked village
And for the first time in so long we found something.
There was a house - A tall wooden house
Alongside the battle field. Its windows were white and wide,
And its doors were open.

We stumbled in, exhausted and drawn to the light.
Fear mounting. Breaths uneven. Human contact,
For once, possible. But we encountered nothing.
The great hall was empty, marauded by the war.
There was only silence.

Upstairs, the light that from a far seemed God like
Was now thin and dim. Everything was illusory.
We stood at the window of the tallest peak
And stared into the red glare of dusk, alone.
There was only silence.

Looking out from the highest window,
I realized the whole world was looming
in the distance somewhere, unreachable to me,
That it would always appear to be out of reach.

We left the old empty house
and continued our wandering.
On again towards the war
That no one ever found.

Little Animals

Our voices lost between the night sounds,
We were shapeless then.
The no trespassing sign
Was emboldened by the moonlight.
We raced past it, over the wooden fence,
Howling like wild dogs, like young beasts:
We were something more than human,
Something easier.

From where did we find this courage,
This force that drove us on and on?
It filled us up, stretched its warmth all through us,
It made us pioneers. Something more than human.

We were drunk on time, on our age.
We had yet to experience the despair
That wisdom offers. We were free of
The obsessive need to be responsible,
Yet to develop the endless list
Of ready made answers, for all the
Unimportant questions facing the
Modern Adult. We were, for a moment, free.

The old man cut his way through the forest toward us,
A shot gun slung over his shoulder like a dead animal.
It was loaded. The Human Element.
Upon his warning shot we scattered
Like fearful birds into thick darkness, our territory.

So-To-Speak (With Conviction)

[Something about h1n1 and all our drug-away carefreeness - stagnancy, stasis, good health in the modern age.]

Today we will spend our time
In a line that curls around a city block,
Waiting for our vaccination.

Later, when we are no longer sick,
We will watch the tickers
With grim fascination.

Then we will resign and dissolve
Into our work, into the ghost town,
The passive nation.

And I will say to no one:
Give me one safe bet
And I’ll move the whole world.

In a graffitied window I’ll find
My reflection. Driving alone i listen
For the song in silent foothills.

But with no anchor
The sea is indiscernible madness,
Black billows, sound and evil.

So I surface and resurface,
Think, rethink, edit, revise,
Move towards nothing with conviction.

So we look to our amulets for safety:
Give us one fixed point,
And we’ll leverage the whole world.