[The wetland grasses plucked as we pass – whole chords of grass blast by. The leaving, the relief of leaving, comes with loneliness – a whole prune on the sill of a half-room. Greens in the morning that we chew; soy-sauce & krill in the eve. Bridges sprout from the bog. My ghosts miss me, they want me dead or back home, so that they can tug at my breath like a grandfather’s beard. Not to be heard giggling their antique talk. All around, I glimpse them.
My friend, drunk, once screamed at the cab driver. Knowing we brought echoes with us when we came. In the Philadelphia train station, this slow land calms down like a child caught in a giant puppet suddenly -- panics. Then gains awe. Then is released, unknown to itself for a moment, un-horsed.
This must be what happens, every breath, in our lunglings, I mean it. Colonial blue, brick red, marble, slights of gold. Whose colors are these? Were these the paints that lasted 4 weeks on a ship over the east Atlantic? Or were they here when we arrived, packaged inside this idea, portraying a country?
On the train to Atlantic City, a king of green wire grows all over everything. Barrels of noise just keep getting shipped in: still I realize it is all home. After the pigment trucks & the geared garbage goes breaking against the power-plant’s house, we could, at any point, stop & grow an apple loom, perform the delicate tradition of surviving. I hadn’t thought about darkness until I was born and now we are strung over the Delaware River. Or packed on a platform, or on stage, just trying to stay alive our own size.]
Sunday, October 21, 2007
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1 comment:
well, i hope that you either put together a collection for me, or you eventually publish enough on this website to allow me to put together a collection.
your poems can't be matched. they're everything they ever needed to be.
thank you for joining the blog.
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