August 6th

Aug. 6th, carved in desks with old knives: “Back when our common cause was alive And--let’s say--the hyacinth fields were in bloom Children watched as the soldiers marched by All the birds fell like frogs from the sky Prostrate in the streets every crescent moon Lonesome offspring of which still resound With the victimless sins of their authors passed down And the remnants of loathsome, disjointed worlds Along the short path round the lily pad pond With off-white deerskin wedding dress on German songs, homemade bonnets like old-order Amish girls jilted by squirrels In the parks of Sioux Falls Haunted by church bells Like ghosts of applause And the earth deep down tire-stacked walls like New Mexico, peaceful as moth-bitten pincushion dolls making up myths about wounds without cause...” And sometimes when it’s quiet my heart feels like Guernica [scenes from old air raid] on screens in blue dusk Perfumed neighborhoods/graveyards the breath feels like Flies in my lungs, voice like ambulance Sirens whose light floods the ground (“praying mantis spreads arms” Said the lines of whose palm?) Skyline shifting like clouds Became “airplane descends” [fade to scenes on the ground] Human foreheads all smashed Foreign cars upside down Insect mouths open wide I stared down a huge insect Bright red-glowing eyes [does it feel wrong to say a thought “metastasized”?] Legs on both highway sides S a i d i n s e c t w a s m e c h a n i z e d ! ! ! ! ! ! (Said insect was mechanized!)