Geognosy

Lost in the crowd of mumbling voices
I barely know what to say, at least out loud.
They all were telling me it was Katy,
“Katy did it, Katy did, Katy…” Katy did what?

I hear what lies beyond those jumbled thoughts.
I know what lies there, beyond the the greasy fields,
beyond the river toward the concrete harnesses,
the asphalt pits and manifold exhaust.
Even the grass can scarsely grow
before it is hacked to look neat and low.
So what if Katy did it, does anyone know?

The glare from the street lights is not from heaven,
though heavenly gas burns within, fed by dancing gnomes.
Traffic roars by in the distance, inevitable, just out of reach
of sleep. Discarded bandaids choke the blood of brethren.
But Katy did. Katy did it. Katy did it. When?

The seeds must be there, but not my breath
beyond the crickets spray of blacks and grays.
A steetlamp’s brown light blinks at death
hovering near. It gasps as the darkness
molds iself around the warmth of our day.

The razor’s edge must still be sharp
but it seems hard to know where it begins
amid the din of mountains freezing
before the tears of this god’s icy artifice.
The streets do not lead to heaven.
The light there is not golden.
Katy knows. Katy does.

Held as if by air
It falls on itself
perpetually leaning toward
gravity’s weight,
stubbornly defying the law.

Perhaps we can learn
to have its strength,
its backbone
over emptiness, to have
such will over political ills.

The silent pains of the body
never prepare their menus
but serve raw meat uncharted.
Caramel burned points of grief
get stuck between bones,
sticky sweet sickening drones,
chants of discus plates chip fresh
green grass, leaving bare
earth bleeding.

The pale cirrus flower glows noctilucently
in the late night moonlight. It droops
as my sleepless sighs exhale anguished air
across its feathered wings, fluttered
sadness after the popped dream of love with you.
For a moment, the ghostly blooms grow a follicle
filled with fresh pomegranate juice
ripe with succulent, mouthwatering possibility
before fading by dawn’s intrusive glow.

There’s not much difference between us.
We both have little to lose or gain
We are both blind
to our sameness as well.
Something gives in
and suddenly our skins
become temporary prisons
mere jokes on regret
lost planets with angry red
fires laughing at our disires
we drain time and breathe
you nod your head
and my heart feels its warmth
for one or two beats
(more than usual)
the line is long
but the desserts look good
so i stand and listen
and keep feeling
the heartbeat around me

Did someone mention my name?
The taper of the pole
doesn’t give itself up easily.
Riding through a pack of samurai,
pertrified statues hush the crowd
while the christmas lights go on blinking
through the roar of exhalation.
The lines form by themselves
with smiles all around
peeking from behind the marble
husks, or better yet, from around
their white turtle cheeks,
necked in pearls held between two fingers
perched notoriously atop peaks,
snowbound shaved legs high, shreiks
mere petals of soap, bubbles across
the path, buoyant stigmata, daring
scar, marked train, momentum impaled
in the middle of the skating rink, oval
hum with the lips sealed,
salient seed, raw instinct
the “oh”, the oh around their necks,
slipping aside the pieces, moving the dice,
intercepting, levitating those risks as they fall
freeze frame, snag of motion, which rubber bands
“snap” back to his face, fozen in some other past,
looking up at me, smiling, waiting for my answer.

Beveled blade aches its cry
slicing the embalmed gray sky
down a quicksilver river
along the tree lined bank,
staccato notes across my eyes
between me and the geese as they slip by.
They leave me with my southern dreams,
yearning with desired wings.
I inhale crisp, dense air and say farewell
to a year, to so many words,
expired breaths, frivolous
exhalations of streams
rolling around rocks as days
dissipated in hale, sunny smiles.
Oh, if I only knew how to hold on,
basking in sunny nonchalance,
as ripened fruit
dribbled down my chin,
or rotted in the grass,
bartending for bees, drunk
with silly, sumptuous reveries.
How could it be otherwise?
Wooden troughs spill over. Waste becomes
sustenance for tufts of grass which flourish below
the overflow, on the ground, the ground
beneath my stumbling steps, raucous,
green world now a frozen gray mind,
as I continue, walking, then jogging,
onward, geese-less.

The roar of highway traffic continues unabated.

It’s those places we get to sometimes,
the end of the bus line, the one not on the map,
where the only way to get there is to cross the bridge,
while snow covered lamp posts crane
their necks to see what you see.
The torture of shifting tectonic plates
becomes a dance, easy to learn, with no steps but one.
Cold hands are no matter when the fire is so near.
The score seems to be in our favor, by a slim margin
but consistent enough to smile at, from under
the hand knitted scarf and fluffy white tinsel
dotting your hair, which melts into
tears as you note how everything matches,
the flickering candle light on silver platters
laden with fruit, plump nectarines, rosy apples,
hearty golden bananas, all inedible, but ravishing
to the starving simplicity of just being there.

I tally the fat and the meat,
weigh each against the grain,
toss aside fiber for mass.