Part One:
1. prodigal lines
2. one more concise history of the world
3. pg.3
4. spring fantasia (magnificent grotesque)
5. [“Do I dare eat a peach?” –T. S Eliot]
6. 15 W. Market Street
7. metaphysique (poetic interlude #1)
8. colloquial history (expanded)
9. caesura

prodigal lines

1

We followed the sound of the train whistle
as far as it would carry us: through December mountains,
snow falling on evergreens like last season’s mistletoe. Then
into the valley deep and wide,
that kept the tread marks of shoes from years before.

There was a time
the stars that were your eyes led us on,
casting certain light like in childhood stories.
We could be sure of it,
then.

(The Faith was strong,
omniscient. Undefeated. The
forecast of the generals was optimistic.)

Since nightfall forty days ago, we are stumbling blind.
Bourbon and prayers are no help against the coming winter.

(The saints no longer listen.)

We are on our own, crippled by our grumbling stomachs.
We hid from the engineers
& the ticket takers with their flashlights,
lived on old animal crackers and stale water
from the Traveling Freak Show. Alligator Boy didn’t mind.
He assumed we were a new attraction.

Reveling through the night, remembering it all
to recount to our grandchildren:

In Remembrance of our lost and wandering eye
In Remembrance of our faces long after they’ve fallen
In Remembrance of these days of our Exile. Do This,

so the onlookers will have something to speak of:
something of the quaint lives of dead folk.

2

I know in the autumn that I am home.
Melancholy skylines behind murals of dying leaves
and the chill in the wind
brought on by the passing trains

(They pass without stopping;
a notice nailed to the station door says
there is a plague, and the city has been erased
from every atlas and public record.)
We wander these streets

staring through shattered windows at reflections of the crumbling city
holding our stomachs

(sore from poisoned animal crackers)

waiting for the next drop of rain that will never come.

It is a cold, dry autumn.
Grandmothers flock to churches to pray for sons and daughters
who never returned from the war. They die prostrate,
words dehydrated on wrinkled lips.

At least this year we have the leaves. Next year, they will be gone,
& the crowds of city dwellers will rot & fight over who will be the last to be buried
in a delicious splendor of read and yellow leaves.

one more concise history of the world

At this moment
dinosaurs walk the Earth—
searching for the return of familiar landscapes.

Heavy footsteps were beat down
into foot trails; trails stretched
into roads,
into curvy state routes,
& gut rattling county roads
cutting through where trees and deer
then cattle and coyote roamed
trusting the immortality of a single day
like a childhood summer. Along the way
villages bubbled up
around farmer’s markets, newspaper offices,
bars and brothels
then railroads built
with the bones of 10 million Indians and Chinese and African Slaves

(the blood coagulates
into read clay, iron ore,
and steel, with which
we have wizened the landscape forever)

learning along the way
how to recycle the dead
terra firma
into cement
into concrete
into plastic
& reflection-free plate glass windows

so the roads became highways
and the villages festered
into towns and cities. Here,
on the banks of the Grand River
on the ruins of the ancient civilizations of Seven Hills
Monolithopolis was forged
with new gutters spilling onto
once sacred ground
atop of where the curse of our undoing
waits to be excavated

while the dinosaurs,
their knees buckled from wandering
can only resort to prayers
and parched, strangled groans.

pg.3
1
Sloshing through the rain and remembrance
waiting for whispered advice of dead fathers and grandfathers:

“My grandfather did it to me and I have no choice but to live with it. Yours did, too.
And you must learn to shoulder the responsibility.”

The voices in my mind are more real in the rain—
more concrete as the water wears them away,
the sedimentary nature of ourselves washed away
mixed with polluted water
and the gasoline spill in the Great River.

30 gallons a minute
floating out to sea
with all that remains of the Kinetic Soul

strange bubbles and fire
in black river mud.

The gray-haired City Alderman ordered the river blocked,
and so he emptied out the cemeteries for their bones
drafted men from homeless shelters to do the labor
and was applauded by tax payers and civic groups
for soothing their worries at a reduced rate.
All cemeteries were turned into playgrounds
and later sold to private contributors for industrial parks.

We find ourselves
shifting through our grandfathers bones.

spring fantasia (magnificent grotesque)

I.

The rosewood trees are in bloom;
unseasonably warm spring winds blow the perfume
& petals everywhere,
makes the sidewalks look like
one minute after a wedding procession.

Days like this
I want to forget this place
go somewhere without skyscrapers
or the sound of airport traffic
or the perennial road construction
tearing up the new tires on our economical commuter car.

Days like this
I want to look out the window
draw mountains over the buildings
erase concrete with dirt
clean the sky with a giant squeegee
so I can see the stars again at night
& know where I am in universe.

II.

But e are here, now.
Coziness has set in.
We are breathing deep these Spring days—but the anticipation of summer
cannot soothe the burning sensation in my hypothalamus that tells me
some old ghost will walk again. I hear them
rattling in the crawl space. They sound like squirrels;
but I know better. I could run the streets
screaming. But my family already mutters about me,
the madman downtown. Too much city water: genetic mutation is inevitable without a filter.
Industrial pollution in the cochlea, cornea
& occipital lobe
leading to massive hemorrhaging
& hallucinations.

According to the news at 5
there is a team of lawyers preparing a case on my behalf—

They are renting me out to a traveling freak show to cover
initial expenses. They gave me my own cage
‘cause the Elephant Man winks suggestively at me with his one working eye
& boasts about the size of his trunk.
The bird woman, legless ex-gymnast
tried to land on my shoulder to nest.

But the ringmaster threatens
it’s only for a while; soon enough, he says,
he’ll throw me in with the rest of the malcontents.
The lawyers advise through carrier pigeons that he only wants more money.

All the birds nest on our roof.
They gather, exchange reports from abroad
& make plans
for the next aerial attack.

III.

[“Do I dare eat a peach?” –T. S Eliot]

The season is delayed this year—
winter holds on with the bit of her icy spikes
refusing to let go.

We unpacked out winter gear for the 10th time
& have left it piled in the corner. There’s no point
moving it to the basement again. All the houseplants have been brought in;
new spring birds, confused, fly in low circles above the power lines.
Ornithologists on the news are concerned
because 1 out of 5 sparrows are decapitated each hour
& the city street workers complain because the carcasses clog the gutters & sewers
& the small pieces of bone break the belts on the street sweepers.
One guy lost his right eye,

but he wasn’t in the union so there wasn’t much fuss.

A telemarketer calls every half-hour
selling the End of Days; for a small donation {payable by credit card or check by phone}
I can ensure my place among the sheep
on that Day when the sky cracks open
like eggs months past the expiration date.

They tell me they will not call again.
But I will talk to them again tomorrow; after all, they get paid on commission.

3 weeks past Easter
& the televangelists are scrambling
rewording overworked translations
misinterpreted for the prime time viewing audience.
But the telemarketers, undeterred, have stepped up their efforts
& opened a telethon on Public Access
to run concurrent until Christ’s return
assuring me they are all praying for my immediate salvation.

The circus, meanwhile,
has moved on
left me tied naked to a half rotten telephone pole. The lawyers won’t return my calls
& every afternoon the Catholic School Girls walk by,
point, laugh
& spit on me.

15 W. Market Street

Cleanly kept empty store fronts act as reminders
of those Golden Years: those days beyond the scope of history.
Echoes of lost footsteps on wide neglected sidewalks
haunt the tired-eyed proprietors of the few open shops
no one bothers to find, preferring the new mall at the interstate bypass
to the drugs & muggings & rampant prostitution
they talk about on the nightly news. The gutters are backed up
with used needles, dirty rubbers, bottles of ammonia
& empty boxes of over the counter cold medicine.
This once cobbled One Way Street is blocked with large orange barrels.

On the corner, the historical society plaque outlines your hey-day
bustling business in a post-war kind of way
wives of the GI Bill waltzing to & fro the white-washed store-fronts
while across the river & downtown
hungry scabs riot in the streets,
crying out
in the name of some forgotten son or another
buried anonymous in heroic mass graves.

The bars here are crowded by quarter to 8
dim lights & deep shadows for morning stragglers
between unemployment checks
& the new instant scratch off game.

metaphysique (poetic interlude #1)

1.
“There are no appropriate translations.”
- Rufus, the Order of Saint Alice

Neither philosophy nor religion
nor metaphysic, nor science
has been able to excise the poetry
from these primordial bones, this spleen
recording eons of histories forgotten,
star maps locked in our diaphragms,
livers and lungs. Though the stars gave us voice
to throw back, the moon and ocean
lend it timber and depth. Rolling thunder calls back
meeting us toe to toe.

But these ultimatums are largely subconscious. Over the years,
we’ll forget them
like breathing or blinking our eyes
no longer paying attention—

deliberation sacrificed for an Empire of the medulla oblongata.

In the name of science passed off
as metaphysic
to replace that old time religion
to silence these spirituals buried in these primordial bones.

2.

Your eyes are moons of some lost galaxy
star maps buried in my cerebral cortex lead the way,
though I need only to trust gravity to find them.

Only there
is the appropriate language
beyond translation: syllables outlined in cosmic fires the only ones
appropriate to say
just how much I love you.

Human words aren’t strong enough
and in out comfortable silences
I hear more of your iridescent soul
than in all our proclamations.

3.

So then—
a search for language.
These words born in our throats are only
the squawks of babies against the deliberate cadence of eternity—
serving only to tell us

we are not alone, to trust
the honesty of natural rhythms
leading back to center.

This essential humanity grows
rooted in natural dissent
in lives spent struggling
against the shadows forged in the dark corners
of childhood bedrooms

alone

against those powers and principalities
whispered in Grimm’s Fairy Tales
and the weekly morality melodramas
and the fear given voice nightly
in special reports
and rancid game show prizes

alone

never noticing through the sweat
percolating in our eyes that all our shadows
appear oddly the same.

colloquial history (expanded)

“History as a series of conflicts” (Marx--paraphrased)

4 million people crammed in Vatican City watching the end of an era;
updates every hour
'tween reports of murders
& kidnapped children
& news of more dead soldiers in the desert. Tail end fin de siecle
end of the millennium spillage
Exxon Valdez off the coast of the cultural imagination
leaking our compartmentalized sins back to us
in regulated drips
so’s we don’t notice the subtle changes
on the molecular level.

The marks of our mistakes revised
to ignore the inevitable stink of a billion plus corpses served.
Fat, retarded fruit flies,
low flying & unconcerned
have the final corporeal say.
20 billion maggots move over the hills & trails & city sidewalks
searching for the afterbirth.

All refuge is underground now.
4 million people in the streets
piled like cockroaches, waiting for the procession to pass by.
Waiting, terminally
for some sign of the circle of life—
something beyond the heartbeat in their ears
to tell them
they are still alive.

All round the world
locked in vaults & tombs
men in somber black suits drink grunted toasts to the dead.
Gin & tonic & ethyl alcohol
the drinks of choice—
with a shot of formaldehyde for flavor.
Alchemic possibilities
secret societies incanting long forgotten dead tongued texts
insecure sounds made from the confiscated ear wax of defeated peoples
in vaulted rooms buried 10,000 feet below the surface
wallpapered with skin left over from the Third Reich.

Here, there is no sound.
Neither whimper nor whirl
and all the whippoorwills have fled
for better crumbs and higher expectations.
The polluted air has sucked out our voices
and it takes all our energy
to simply breathe.
All over the city,
thousands of bodies line the streets
atrophied,
sallow-eyed & starving
stuck in the moment of the Great Consumption.
Everyone on the streets fell where they were. Those not killed in the calamity
people in crosswalks, random house fires, or ICU wards
gasp & want:

wheezing asthmatics breathe while their lungs shrink more each day
& their hearts thump mad in the ears,
& every night they pass out
praying on chapped lips
to never wake up.

caesura

Sitting at my kitchen table, I listen
to the sound of train whistles echoing
at regular intervals—

(the corpses of more unknown soldiers coming home.)

When traffic stops at railroad crossings
husbands and wives step out of rusty trucks to watch
the 30 mile line of cars
roll by. Geographically speaking

I live somewhere between the whistle blows
watch the 10’clock news for bedtime stories
to lull me into sleepwalking dreams

(wondering the next morning why I always wake up crying.)

Doing as the Pastor bids
I pray in the streets
lament the wide and crumbling sidewalks
so heaven will hear;

following the example of the City Alderman
who consults every wandering drunk, their beards
wrangled like in the stories
of Old Testament Prophets re-interpreted

from loose translations based on 3rd person accounts.

As the trains pass
faceless, gray-suited attendants shove the coffins out
for relatives or medical schools to claim. Meanwhile,
In the shadow of the Great Monument,

safe inside the Chapel of Saint Alice,
children are trading rosaries and bible school pins for bitter lemon drops
bringing with them the bodies of dead cats, guinea pigs, three-legged hamsters,
arms and legs of fathers and mothers severed by the heavy traction of tanks lining the streets

(to keep us safe from harm)

Kitchen tables remind me of Sunday mornings before church
of Grandpa reading the Sports Page and smoking a cigarette (filterless)
while Grandma talked about the walnut trees outside, and I read the comics
pretending to laugh at punch lines I never understood

like sermons
later in the morning
having more to do with tithing
than attaining salvation.

>>>Continue to P art Two: