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!)