Training missions |
|
1 |
Mom's a tiny bird |
something of an allosaurus with radio |
activity on his breath. One up |
in flames, the other down |
to earth, but the poem watches on indifferent |
and amused, posterity |
hanging in the balance |
like it means something. You can just hear |
sniffling in the background. |
|
Meanwhile, space junk falls |
across the satellite image, striking |
some in the temples. They get up off their knees |
to slouch on their sofas |
with the rest of us. Real salaries shrink |
as citizens of good breeding plan a more profound
engagement |
with rehearsals. Reclining, we dribble coffee or tea
or high octane |
gasoline all over the carpet furniture, even our
genitals |
itching to get busy with something, we
don't know |
what. Yeah, we've been spoiled all right |
and it shows especially during |
commercials. We've forgotten when to say |
good riddance, we won't or can't |
stoop for change, and disappearances |
to the contrary, nothing |
nothing seems to burn, Ringo |
not even in the studio. |
|
But the poem hasn't got a clue. When confronted
directly it says it has all the words it needs |
to get by. Who doesn't? the most virtuous of us |
snaps. Mom and Dad tumble |
in the elements, and the rest of us advance
slowly |
our every movement monitored, tight astride the
hunch |
that something needs to be done about this words
or |
no, poem or no posterity |
or no.2 It
doesn't, it can't |
|
end there, though. We'll discover what's taxing |
in the process |
but this is no guarantee that others won't arrive
pat |
click trails to check volatilities, portfolios
shorn |
of all that expresses the ragged fundamentals |
the sort of thing you hear on the boardwalk |
or eavesdrop up a high |
rise in Seattle, or near Denver -- false eminences,
that sort of thing |
keeps toes protected teeth buffed, eyes carefully
shaded |
against the sun against |
one another, a shrewd static state of |
if-you-don't-mind |
and when animated, not a little |
goofy -- yo,
boobie |
|
3: that they had been here before, Mom and Dad |
butterscotched |
evoking ornithology and halitosis, the crocodiles
cry |
as the klieg lights give them to understand |
a few tweets and a camouflaged cough |
or two, burbling bebop |
into the mike and all the while, us, our curious
nostalgia |
for miniatures, air the size of |
Shinola, roughing it to the point of tear |
gas, prevailing |
|
had been here before |
we are lucid now are we? having committed |
their good words |
privacies, to memory |
as we have committed our own |
|
only to burn brightly burning |
through fire itself |
all the evidence destroyed |
words poem posterity |
save their hoping |
like hell to hope |
like hell |
would but put them to |
sleep,
|
like hell |
would but put them |
|
to sleep |