Hardship

I carry the cross. You
carry the cross too.

This is What My Underclothes Look Like

I have no interest in anything
but waking up, eating breakfast.
Irish coffee. Getting dress, getting
undressed, and laying in bed.
Just for the thoughtlessness of it. That
morning seems to happen twice.

And I'm sorry because I know
that things are sexier unknown.
But I've got this growing need
to show you what my underclothes
look like. Which is what I'm sheathed
in when I slip between the sheets.

Again reflected in the plain weave
patterned light and humid breath
beneath; and television on but
sound real low. How am I accidentally
starving myself but for the calories
of alcohol and dry toast.

Chicago Fire, II

Prolouge

July 4 was a fine day but
for the Dresden of fireworks

which rang out—obscene—ceaselessly
as fruits grown on the drooping boughs of trees

Some—or one—I don't know which
must have found an errant stitch

of flammable fiber, or else a
disused watertower (who populate

Chicago since the fire) and started

fire.


Sweet Ignis

Sweet Ignis, who like a well-
ing spring of heat, rolls up & out

as if to point to the spark of it's ignition.
And water falling couldn't squelch;
no retardant foam or liquid. It's
somehow overturned insipid and
long-held beliefs of plasma
and it's states of being.

The quickly darkening white ceiling
the scorched red suede settee
the fleeing children and their hobbled
fleeing families.



a Fragile Bunker

Therefore; don't underestimate the
grandeur in an arduous task.
like breathing through a charcoal mask

or climbing over ever-growing piles
of rubble.

Escape: who like a shaking, screaming head on bed of lettuce
watching from an elevated place
or places

through a floor
made up of some new glass
that will bend.

And through that tower's cushioned end
of metal—that won't melt.



Being Far Away or Platitudes

So distances have made the heart
grow fonder. And juxtaposed
the city's massive flame from
distance on the central plain;
the blip on sea of a transponder
awaiting rescue.

And hearing of the rage, just laid
in bed without a thought toward
it.


Whose ruined things and third degree
burns; whose curling Pergo hardwood floors

Which episode of which will I be missing
while unrepenting twitch response omitted
and admitting?



Getting Out of the City Alive

Not breathing.
In cessation of the soul's own will
& the lint trap is an empty till
of hair's ends: black and short

The turbulence during
the outbound ride, the chaffing of your skin
—it's hide. The leather strapping
of restraint on lap is pride.

The crossing of a long forgone suspension
bridge

laid across the river's northern edge
& draped sedately out of mind.

And reaching ground on it's far side;
just cried and thought of those who've died.

In some rotting
perilous reside.



Playing with an Injury

Finding what is literal in
talc

and being on the wave
of what's not felt before

you; having lost the sensory
nodes in your fingers

& your toes.


You're laying in some deft
repose. and paralleled

in the quiet anguish of
replication. You both

in bed, and still; two places.



the Empty World

They were right when said
that the world will end by
fire, or by other means.

But what if, after Christ's return,
our sun won't grow but stay
where it is.

And all of us, raptured one way
or another, and left finally the
stewardship of our hovel

to dawdle on in
some nothing.


Still dancing slow with glittering points
of light from a firework let off
too close.

The hiding in a swimming pool, the anxious
causing nervous drool in stagnant rivulets
down chin.



Pennance

Even non-Chicagoans
are residents today.
Dropping things along the way
and trying to find importance
in the missing of them.
And being implicit in
their misplacement
—But turning a blind eye toward that.
Leaving fingerprints
in dust, and referencing
the rubbing off of rust
or build-up through
repeated touchings.
Finding some evidence of things lost,
finding proof in every passing face
of sons, and brothers
torn asunder. Listing mothers
falling back and being caught
at the mention
of the others far away.
Distrusting all reportage
on the subject, however
well reasoned,
or soberly delivered.
Not taking credit for
other lapses, as the
purview of the disbeliever.



Chicago Fire

And in the end even more
of it burned than in the first
Chicago fire. Not just down
-town and around the loop,
Over the river's north side both
times.

Opening

Neck bent back is
not always the best
setup for breathing.
Like they say it will
be in CPR courses.
Sometimes
cigarettes
have left their mark
(or something else)
and no position of
the neck eases any-
thing—breathing,
eating, drinking water.
And so then what
is left when knowing
what's inside our
necks (or any other
part) and how it
works in tandem with the heart has
no correlation to what
one finds when bent
back, looking up
for absolution, or out
of daily exhaustion
with breath.

How I Can Be More Like Robert Creeley

My hope; to tell a story
through little incidents
faint images, and pausing
then retreat. And having
given the impression
of a narrative despite
it's not connecting thoughts.

On and Under Large Wall

From our vantage on the wall
we can see both sides. And spy
the tacit movement in the grass
of any creature from the past
skittering, even slightly. But O,
how it is frightening. The angle
of a viewer from the distance
is almost 90 degrees. Straight up
parallel to trees on either side.
Standing up as much to show our bent
as for any growing meaning. Some
-how, to us it's lent itslef dis
-couragingly. And the single
point of distance; either end is
an unbearable thing to sense
and so from it turn away.
I never have intention to discredit
the path. The strong black coffee
plays counterpoint to it, jointly
in the dark and curtained back
room. Steam rises in listing lines,
corrodes the brick on either side
and forming ceiling. And darkened
distance just belies a difference
playing on opposed ends nicely
Stretching icily, ad infinitum.

Model of Duress

If these things are somehow
a matter of precision
and will wither in
the light of wan retention.

Thoughts like heavy
black steel blocks fall out
of your head. A litter
of exacting standards
unfulfilled by bulbous strands
of weld joints;
somehow alive. Somehow
vicious fungoid, holding
things together by keeping
sides apart, and joining
anyway. A rule—unseen—
of outcomes meted out unevenly.

Which masonic-minded fellow
extricated in some feat this
brashly anti-human ruleset
and replicated it in glass
as a scientific model
of duress, for teaching.

a Universal Declaration of Human Rights

On a hot and humid morning
on a hillside grove in Baja,
workers know—somehow that
far away, on a plain and over-
looking from another hill-side;
great radio-dish & telescope
on a squat and middling set
of buildings. They see as if
through one's mind's eye the
observation deck. Hung just
above the spinning chair of
Calvin—the night astronomer,
now gone—a sphere of light.
Struck down by awe, one man
remembers the future rapture,
the fire from the sky, and the
ascension of the holy to reside
on high. So climbing trees, just
him at first and then the others;
a small vain try to actually see it—
though indescribable the distance
that between them both would ply
an emptiness that one has felt
his whole life.

And no one could describe the sight
that took them not by words, but light
and darkness, color and impression.
And so despite their sharing things;
the night, the light, the empty feeling;
bow'd their heads and camped
a fortnight in that place, in hope
of it's returning.

Condensate

In the entrance of both seasons
the liquid dripping off of things
and into cups is saccharine,
insipid, very sour.

The screams of children joined
together in the outside hour,
are a single scream abounding
as a siren sounding.

Being lonely in it's singular nature
in that no sound comes up to meet it
and so nervously vibrates limbs
leaves, wires.

Anything that can hold a drop
of water.

Modernism, Postmodernism, Postmodernism

In my world, hope's
a thing deferred; it

disturbed like that
keeps backing back.

What, when dissatisfaction
comes as balm on back so
scarred by sun? Whose light
as future's path expected

and something in nature
that is reflection of it.
"And everything around is
growing disaffected to it,"

but drained of meaning,
and lacking any aim of
correcting things, or even
the notion that correcting

them is possible. It's thudded
closed a fuzzy wall, reflecting
—with the focus of it
all the choices of a portcullis
to the keep of the heart,

which holds all hope and
is disappointed that
ultimately progress comes not.

[The cut's not that big—It's]

The cut's not that big—It's
just bleeding. I don't think
I'll need any antibiotic oint-
ment, or anything.

Two Tools

(for Maxxie)

Tilt of drip pan
belies the under-
lying structure of it
—it supports—both hands.

Two tools, set up, one
taller.

Hair thats
blonde but isn't

white skin.

Early Aughts Excesses

Subtract the gilt derision
that exists as film—stretched thin.
and monitor the pooling
blood in back of head.

All of this frenetic movement
is adolescent flailing dread.
And recognize that though it's fast it's dead.

Plea for Better Media

Stop being so easy.
Please, they are so

easily led. Project in-
stead a message of argument.

Stop curling up as pill-
bugs curl, and uncurl

showing your velvet underside,
black, holding legs of every

creature left on earth, besides!
Move up the hardwood floor

beneath the body, barely
curling up; alive then dead.

And so distrust its motions
or distract from them as best

we can.

Pickling Liquid, Large Glasses

The main mast of a ship, white
sails cresting distance

in response to it. Carry-
ing on with a list, tries to

carry away, and to dispel it's gasses
on strong trade winds, but can't.

A stain upon the small lead,
green it seems to mine

eye, encircled by a bird
who's flying low, eyeing the ship

with hungry eyes, no irony
and no surprise. It has

a medical meaning in it's wing
feathers. Its fluffy down spreads

particles of preservation. Leaves
trail of picked fish when fly'ng

it lands upon the crows-nest then
alights.

Mob, Moors

After the exploration of peat moss
their bodies were kept in empty

oil barrels. It taught us to be wary
for evidence of things long dead.

Gasses, things that float don't hold
in neutral-bouyant plasma. Bed

of conformity for corpses. Not
unlike green florists foam. Until

a stagnant undertow grew under
the slurry of water and moss. Who

moving through it could leave traces.
Grown and decomposition will outpace us.

Three Things That You Are

1)
You are an esophageal
convulsion. Take that

whatever way you will.


2)
You are preparing
hygiene, cleaning

clipping fingernails. And
treading those finer dis-

tinctions. Whether stay–die
or leave here and live with

repercussions of cuticles.


3)
Stop making my decisions
you are the driver of an ice rig.

Eighteen wheels, steel covered
and something presumably important

and you make the journey, but it's dicey.

War on Mars

Prolouge

Your optimism really sucks,
you know it won't turn out
that way—intellectually you
must. But you find a way
around the doubt. Your
city isn't my city; mine's
layered with dust. And
you'll have to redouble your
holding to trust, which at
present condition's insoluble
rushing past massive flood-
gates, machining was terrible
with rust. As passive as a
once teeming broken world
is.

Just us, and ours.



the Lay of Mars

Mars thereabout was mostly
flat, and sometimes besmirched
by fields of red and rough-hewn
rock. Except where we set out,
or the ancient place our our arrival,
or theirs,

was on the side of Mount Rainier,
or where it's foothills fell away to
flat ground, where the domes could
give themselves fair structure for
their internal suppoprt. And where
wind was low.



the Middle Road

Sidelong encampment—
now a nation, bathed in
cobalt blue. And whose
excursions henceward
were espied by nearer
men who there would
play upon the line.

And guard was set there
by our side. And I walked
it, not alone by night but
flanked on both sides by
our men. Cloaked in rubber-
ized canvas suits. Creaky
metal joints, glass faceplate.

And I have watched them
die, whether shot through,
or grazing tore the suit's seal
would let the vacuum in. No
breath, eyes turning pearly
white. Maybe a smatter of
blood on the glass or frozen

in the bullet hole. And it was
cold, under the chill red sun
in morning, or setting blue-white.
Even being alive, and having
a suit heater. Cold and
wet, taught dimpled skin
all on the rubber suit.



Patrolling the Escarpment

And taking our task to heart
we traipsed around an old tin
shed and over the stone plaited
raiment of a rise. Gravel and
dust raising up on a slow wind
lower gravity, by the dim halo
of the fluorescent lights on
distant tower we'd look out back
on our side of the line. Cold
metal of the gun through rubber
suit was radiating. And the fan
inside the suit kick'd on, bullets
on the air race from the dark side
of a crater's dust hill. Running fast.
Huff of own breath off glass echo
around in helmet.

Running fast, breath fog glass,
hard to see, as darkening from
distant light. New bullets stream-
ing past my back. Running fast
shoot back. Hide.




War on Mars

The vac-suit's untoward and heavily
impedes your arms, legs, their moving.

The grit thrown up by any of a number
of explosions, or bullets thudded in,

is dust in all the crevices of the helmet,
and in the hinges of the joints. You've

seen it all to much. And so have I. What
happens if we just decide to leave it all

behind, and steal a ship, or stowaway
in a leaving skiff in the cargo bay. What

does it say about us that we let it?

Expatriotism

I know that I can't drive in
darkness. And I apologize for
everything. Like,

if I went to Mexico City or
to costal Mazatlan I'd open
doors to nothingness
beyond.

The constant small corrections
that I make as bends on glass
hedged in

by all black solder, or
the listlessness of curves
ahead on ridge
edges.

There being no swerve-
preventing guardrails here
in Mexico,

along some of these wildly
set coastal roads on cliffs.
Have more important
things to do

with public money that accrues
from taxes than to spend it all
on roads.