SURPLUS MEMORY

Sure, I could take to the talk-show circuit,
with its bright-lit carnival of enforced confession,
but what I keep to myself Is left to the mist, to the slow dissolve, to the ellipse of suggested suffering. I myself am not even sure
what I have suffered. Wounds are like that.
You get so used to living inside them
you might miss the fact
that they've long since closed.

SAVIOR

Your forehead says fever like a hot button meter
and I’m guessing you’re not alone.
It’s the multiple delirium of the One True Imperium:
When you’re righteous, you’re always home.
But when the sky is full of hammers
and you’re dressed in fire and antlers-- My, how you’ve grown!

A CAUTIONARY TALE

There was a bumper-crop of tall dark strangers that season.
You had a whole range to choose from.The vox populi sprang from every strangled chimney-top,
all of it a tournIquet of yearning. Nothing a needle and
thread couldn't solve. What was left marched downtown,
what was fiery was voluntarily doused. It might help
to claim radio interference at this point, out in some
far-flung province. Open mouths count as dark spots
in the integrated web. Their tracking system is like
infra-red, only a cruel inversion. So clear,
a bible could be written by it. My God, pain
was started for a purpose. It was made for you to look the other way.

DREAMS OF EMPIRE
Like everyone else I know, I live in fear
of a receding hairline, roots like the last stands
of virgin forest being pushed back, until each follicle
is dazed and isolated, a drunken party-goer
alone on the sun-bleached plaza at dawn, counting loose change, wondering what
happened to his companions, if the concert
is still going on.

Oh, I still dream of slipping into the evening
in a black velvet suit. But once I wandered,
hopelessly delusional, and found my way back
by spotting a Rambo billboard, his sweating gun
leveled against his own townspeople.
I knew I was close to home.

DREAMS OF EMPIRE #2

The 6 AM fish market stunk of guts, it glistened.
From a doorway, a leering stranger gathers his bones
long enough to ask for a light.
As I cup the sulfured tip for him, I see
I am speaking to my own ghost, spun
of clothes I am just beginning to wear,
flayed down to nothing,
to the merciful medicine,
to the buffalo bone.

THE NEW HOLLOW

I float with ruined cargo, heaving on the river.
I am nauseous and blood-fed. Take me over.
Tell me of the still-damp edge within our reach.
Lay me down there, startled on new land.
Let me begin the long hollowing-out…

WEIGHT

I have come to feel the weight
of strangers who live as close
as the windows across the street. Although for me, they weigh
no more than a snatched breath,
a stuttering film clip, something
held in a lidless blue light,
in a grip so steady and determined
it must be a dance; one that is heavy,
twists under its own weight.
Her fingers by the sill,
a mute instrument ready
to draw the curtain, to forget all this,
to say, “the dance is closed.”