RADIO SILENCE

The wind spins like a derelict surgeon seeking a scalpel point.
The satellites sputter, a sudden
blind-eyed chorus with one push of a button,
and all that’s illuminated is now dark.
All the cell phones just lost their charges, all the servers down, all the wire relays garroted
by larger wire relays
and so on and so on.

All for this moment of silence, so I could hear you…

DUTY NOW/DUTY FREE/DUTY LATER

Penniless at the border, I recant my last cant
(Wait a minute, is that legal?)
And didn’t you just move the border,
according to convenient product placement?
I’m stuck out here pissing into the wind,
while you’re busy keeping warm
off kindling from all the shaved angles.
I look at you, and don’t know you at all.
You look at me, and know me too well.
And the wind howls around us,
measuring spaces…

INTERNAL DOCUMENT

Forgive me. I was busy applying myself
to the fundamental principles of Manifest Destiny,
knowing that everything is free until you take it,
when I suddenly find out I’m interfering with an ongoing investigation…

[This conversation is presently being rerouted.

Everyone is innocent, until the new app is finalized.

Papers, please.]

STARING INTO THE APPARENT DAWN

The veil of air lifts,
shadow itself is undermined.
Out of the mist, a tree trunk
writhes its’ limbs like Gumby
in a passion play on the Cross,
which makes me think
what a pagan bit of clay
we all are, after all!…

WHOLE SALE NIGHT

The moon, immutable, punches
tin-plated grey calligraphy
across the swaying tree tops.
The slow rotation of the electric
fan like cars shushing
down a distant desert highway.
The words can’t be read, or even
said out loud. The night will close
us whole, if we just let it--
leaving us reduced to our essence.
Like the quickly ticked-off items
in the police blotter of some
small town newspaper, random
acts of petty larceny and
drunken vengeance,
the ink of mingled lives
coming off on our fingertips,
as the night’s heat disperses…

VIEWFINDER FINDS HORIZON

All the cowboys have been scalped.
All the Cities of Tomorrow a cindered prayer.
I am back on that 2nd grade shag carpeting,
oversaturated afternoon cartoons
spilling from the wood grain console.
I am aware of the treaties
and foreclosures of the past,
a tired trail whisking me
into its’ vortex that fills the screen,
the blood of every footprint
reduced to a color cell;
undifferentiated background detail.
I will streak my cheeks red
and play the Indian in the back yard.

EPITAPH

After a day of steady rains has ended, some one plays a warbling, mournful tune
on their flute by an open window, 2 AM, Brooklyn.

CAPSULE REVIEW

The Garden Mother lifts her skirt
and hence, the verdant plains.
I stand at attention
deficit disorder,
and generally miss the point,
which rests on a much-needled
voodoo doll that the angry mob
has taken a sudden dislike to.

I will take religion as a mouthful,
and want it reduced to an even
more concentrated capsule;
one slip under the tongue
and it’s done.

Salvation turns on a dime.
A neck thin enough to break
between two fingers,
like a wafer.
Hence, the verdant plains…

NAMELESS ZONE

The red war paint of the van’s reverse brake lights
washes over my apartment’s walls as it pulls in next door,
casting me in momentary blood and chain link shadow
relief, and suddenly, I am nameless, in some forsaken
war zone that will also remain nameless, and they’ve come
for me and I feel the weary resignation in my bureaucratic
bones, sitting on a front stoop late at night in Brooklyn…

ALL I ASK…

…Is that the elm tree cast its’ shadow
(writhing in wind) on the apartment building
across the street. All I ask is that
the imposing matronly silhouette in the ground floor
window doesn’t mark me down as “suspicious”
as I smoke a butt on my front stoop
and enjoy the incongruous night winds of Brooklyn.
All I ask is that time opens up
and you can step in.
All I ask is that I’m not mistaken
for who I actually am…