Fretted Instrument

When you’re feeling

            oversweetly moved

by the quiet hum

            of passing traffic,

there’s always

            an uncertain anxiety,

and tassels growing listless

            in the breeze

to keep you feeling

            like you’re tied

to a reality,

            or at least longing

to be held in check.

            At least

there’s movement

            in uncertainty –

it befits you

            to feel a certain shock

at your own audacity,

            or maybe your humility

is beaming toward

            the surface.

Maybe you should have

            thought

twice, before creating

            the conditions

for advice. If you

            depart

before we have a chance

            to say

goodbye, at least you

            know

that there’s nothing in

            teaching

that should ever resemble

            someone’s pride

being shattered. If you

            want to know,

this has been a pleasant

            encounter

for me, and I hope

            one day

these oversweet

            sentiments are

just coming to a close

            when we meet

again, somewhere outside

            of here.

Deathbed

Escape into convenient dangers.

Witness the very real threat of a vanishing sunrise,

of your accountability.

If nothing comes of this startling obituary,

I’ll stay and talk with you

as the tunnel is slowly illuminated,

as your caught in frustration, in a web of stars.

See me as a true friend,

cast aside for your tragic endearment to failure.

I’m safe with that fact. And no second rate merchandise

Will ever make its way into the fragile thicket of your imagination.

White leaves

These audacious blossoms

are a figment of forced observation.

The exhaust for which they feel affection

is nothing greater than your childhood:

you never flew off through the windshield

and Black Friday was never as important as it seemed.

What difference does it make if birds come cunningly,

like trumpets through a wall of angry light;

if the mountains are indeed just shaking out an itch? 

There never were any Indians in Columbus’ America.

Thicket

Such an unenthusiastic landscape,
To its credit went your daily limp.
The harvest was arbitrary –
What did you expect to find?
This tiny country is a thing of the past,
That seed just the parachute of the first world,
Whose dance meant little more than distraction.
Whose layers of years peering out of houses
Were so quick to leave your sight –
No wonder that sickle never touched the ground,
The ground to whose shoulders
You still attribute your seasonal fatigue.

The grave at the railroad tracks

Persevere through sorry pathways of neglect
through howling open mouths on concrete slabs
tufted with innocent grass

Though you neglect it a culture flourishes here
like germs or gems with an inner life
reflected by the quality of cuts and colds
exemptions and shivers
that say keep away
like signs for high voltage
signs on the railroad tracks

Here is one whose name is X
not the real one he says
only marks the company of coming trains

A name that’s heard through plots of grass
in purple trees the color of a king’s lamented haze 

traffic signs

your exit signs are oracles

that buckle under flocks of harmless omens

fathers’ fathers watchful of observant eyes

red glare and military awkwardness

artworks to be noticed and sped forward

clothed communist with traits exposed

associated illnesses and muted clouds

electric as the heap of movement

predetermined ornamented route

swerving like beheaded snakes

the waverings from course

in circumstance familiar and jolting

warnings

your awkward viking storefront doesn’t scare me

nor does the pitter-patter of the women’s feet

scampering like cats behind your alley

the lopsided warnings of your trucks

their gleaming headlamps only eyes

my unborn child read about in books

your naked two-by-fours don’t make me shake

no arsenic will keep me from your stoop

that desk they say you left to me as bait

old and wrought-iron

weatheredly delicate and strange