SLAVES

The slavish wantons are already claiming
that you’re a lost down payment
on what we hoped for,
that you’re already the sum
that’s less than its’ parts,
already a discard, a mask,
a skin better settled,
a gift that breaks apart.
The slavish wantons, with tongues
tied like rust-gummed railroad tracks
to a past they haven’t noticed is behind them.

JOE THE DECIDER

I don’t live in a straight line.
You’ll never trace my scent.
The arc of history descends
wherever I says it does.
You’ll never take me alive.
I never said that.

I’m somewhere between
where the flame starts
and the seal is set.
Don’t give up.
You’ll forget me yet…

SPUTTERINGS

Has my tongue been registered
in the coming convergence?
Has its’ oscillations been properly
adjusted for? I keep hearing you
named in the wind, off in the distance,
howling like we were born to do.
I keep wanting to parse one second
from the next, stripping you down
to the barest signal, that teletype
between breaths, that lip
of a grin just abandoned,
that structure I wrote off
as unsound…

DIAGNOSIS

I am willing to accept the diagnosis
of my most maladied doctor.
His pacemaker runs off low-grade
plutonium, he should be able
to hum a few bars, and keep a tune.

I am willing to accept scurvy
as an unforeseen side-effect,
and degradation to the outer hull,
that social niceties are the first to go.
I’m willing to accept that.

I am willing to accept that I’m less
than completely on message,
that escape clauses only have room
for one, that this sickness
can’t be wished away.

I am willing to accept that
as I’m tied to the mast,
plunging into storms that only
know my name, I will be the last
one left speaking it…

POTENTATE

You called me the golden calf
but I ended up with a silver tongue
where the knife has started
that’s where I’ve begun
no shortness of breath
no palpitations
this corpse immaculate
upon inspection
I speak no further than this body
and I need no further reach
I’m the bankrupt slaughter
every fear that’s ever slipped past
I hold the lease

BANKRUPT

I am the father of many skins;
I wear them duly, in the procession
they were meant to be seen in.

I can’t abide a wayward son,
stripped to his skivvies,
and guessing the capitol of Mexico.

I am a free-range thinker,
and it’s thirsty work out there.
I carry the goblet, you provide the rain.

I’m a miracle worker who’s lost
his devoted flock, I’ve gone bankrupt.
I am the father of many names…

TURBULENCE

You are beside yourself on the tarmac,
taking an illicit snapshot as evidence,
proof you should be at work, or home in bed,
anywhere but here, arguing
with a switch-bladed matriarch
about the very validity of a claim
to “the Friendly Skies.”

We’ve all been robbed.
Saint Peter’s in foreclosure.
We trace the tainted line
on the map closer and closer,
drawing our breath to match
the wagon trained limits,
till we get to the red scrawl
at its’ center, the arrow that points,
“You are here.”

You are beside yourself.