I heard sirens as I was walking back to my car tonight,
And for half of a second,
I thought it was the most beautiful sound I'd ever heard,
That the sheet had been pulled
And right there was ultimate reality -
The sirens singing in harmony,
Coming out to vindicate life at last
Now that it had finally broken.
But they sang too high.
They embraced me and scrubbed me
The way darkness and freezing street light
Cradle cracked ribs, pulsing like a Ukranian techno club.
They got there in time.
But they forgot to take me with them.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Saturday, April 3, 2010
We started taking walks because the anger is easier outside.
Raging at suburbia, simmering in a psychic heat
That withers every dwarf tree, recreates Hiroshima
On every growth-stunted tree it passes,
We walk on for a few hours, not looking at the sun
Because it really doesn't get it. Eventually it'll go away.
We'd seen that footage of a wide-open square
And a grey-washed ceiling-sky,
The Hindu-Buddhists crowding together for a circular mile,
Shaking and shouting in fear of the abyss they stand on,
Waiting for a blessing, a guardian angel drawn together out of the cosmic mire
And injected onto their backs.
They felt the rage then too, shrieking in the animal tone
That's soulful only on the Bayou,
Digging in with fingers only for claws -
A tug on the ear,
And the madness is gone.
They slept in the woods and got frostbite looking for Vishnu.
They don't know it, but we had a creed too:
Never settle
Never grow roots
Never admit to being sensible
Never claim to be healthy, because health is an illusion
Never explain to them the difference between insanity and Madness -
But we never seemed to realize that the anger came with it.
It's all rage that the sun should set
Before we finished speaking our mind to it.
We can't walk fast enough - it slips down behind the infinity of road
And is gone.
Far overhead a porcelain whale glides through the sky,
Now as blue and dark as the Adriatic,
And a desolate Ahab follows it on the ground,
Lonely and heartbroken,
Gripping his harpoon in vain readiness.
At last he shrugs and turns slowly homeward,
Aching for his proper place and time,
Now more than a hundred years gone.
And the whale spreads a tantalizing wake across the sky.
Raging at suburbia, simmering in a psychic heat
That withers every dwarf tree, recreates Hiroshima
On every growth-stunted tree it passes,
We walk on for a few hours, not looking at the sun
Because it really doesn't get it. Eventually it'll go away.
We'd seen that footage of a wide-open square
And a grey-washed ceiling-sky,
The Hindu-Buddhists crowding together for a circular mile,
Shaking and shouting in fear of the abyss they stand on,
Waiting for a blessing, a guardian angel drawn together out of the cosmic mire
And injected onto their backs.
They felt the rage then too, shrieking in the animal tone
That's soulful only on the Bayou,
Digging in with fingers only for claws -
A tug on the ear,
And the madness is gone.
They slept in the woods and got frostbite looking for Vishnu.
They don't know it, but we had a creed too:
Never settle
Never grow roots
Never admit to being sensible
Never claim to be healthy, because health is an illusion
Never explain to them the difference between insanity and Madness -
But we never seemed to realize that the anger came with it.
It's all rage that the sun should set
Before we finished speaking our mind to it.
We can't walk fast enough - it slips down behind the infinity of road
And is gone.
Far overhead a porcelain whale glides through the sky,
Now as blue and dark as the Adriatic,
And a desolate Ahab follows it on the ground,
Lonely and heartbroken,
Gripping his harpoon in vain readiness.
At last he shrugs and turns slowly homeward,
Aching for his proper place and time,
Now more than a hundred years gone.
And the whale spreads a tantalizing wake across the sky.
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