the telling in the tell: a poem about redbuds

(via)

Diasporic Gucumatz
    First wasp of the season
Not marked
    Not marked at all
The backpack lid heavy
    With its undigested quids
A wall holed near the bottom
    The rain-swollen wood gate
Putting the trash cans back
    Reading complicated stains
Pouring out the old milk
    Running out of things to read
& what if voting doesn’t work
    Season-turn
Collect terse accounts
    Of overseas cataclysms
All this
    To be left out
Of the book
    Bookmarks hardly glanced at
Always the surf sound
    How would i draw this
& blogging far in advance
    Writing now while i cranch
Perchance ‘twas the fault
    Of the life that they led
So much trouble for Yemen
    Yet here it is
Last half of the second cup
    & hardly tasted
Fallen tape dispenser
    These candles that are Mordor
Should i pursue that moth
    Category 4 storm
Chill in the air before dawn
    Lost in the clown-car crash
Raghdirst for the future
    Dark clouds in my alkahest
Starting to burn off
    The coffee almost done
Count on turbulence
    In lieu of a stirrer
Pushbutton pen too cool
    To discard though it hardly works
& the small acts of nurturance
    Are there
Though seldom in the poem
    & the future shadows me
With hungering eyes
    Of torrid mumchance
We like being lied to
    It’s all opioids now
Truck at a crawl behind
    Nasty mint julep
Raghdirst for the past
    Record after record
Vinyl in perfect shape
    No one will ever want again
Blue sky mirrored in a shiny car
    A moment then pulls ahead
Brutalist underpasses
    That have sheltered me
Tyvek panels on a half-built shop
    Near where we used to live
Before we were driven out
    This is not the story
Sunlight at the end
    Of a shady lane
Awaiting sentencing
    Restaurants i would try
Not quite bucket list
    At the palindrome name
Things
    I couldn’t possibly invent
Like a street that’s changed course
    Since last i drove it
& i still want to go that old way
    Though i’ve had forty years
To get used to it
    & used it
So many fewer times
    A stairway of velleities
Won’t ever let me go
    Wake to anguish
Phantomnation nation
    Kverelo logjam Jamshyd
The lone and level sands stretch
    Campout by a cloverleaf
As i watch the little videos
    Of buildings collapsing
Halcyon skies here
    Ten seconds i captured
Of rain ruining rain
    We’ll need another word
For what falls by then
    Perhaps these streets for the trekking
If the gimcrack homes no use
    For any sort of shelter
Hey! we had drivethrough coffee
    & cam’ras in our phones
& not one epic poet
    Who could take its measure to stay
Not the first outfit come to grief
    By toxic masculinity
Say they all did
    But sometimes Nature helped
Halcyon smiling
    With a switchblade up one sleeve
& laws we only discover
    By what happens when we break them
& most of us wouldn’t have slaughtered
    Wildlife to the last endling
So rich these final sunsets
    The shapes revealed
Of mountain peaks without their snowcaps
    As i thread the barricadea
With my single-source java
    & “stone-age computer jam” playing
That someone in the Oughts collected
    A gauntlet of barricades
Nothing next to the gauntlet in my head
    Compared to, run
We are slaves of the gods,
    Whatever they may be
So our games & our toys
    Carry onto the battlefield
Like the snare drum & the fife
    Re-enactors have set on vinyl
I play for the refugee camp

When the glaciers marched
    Not one human but was fleeing
& that gauntlet, more than not,
    Failing to surmount
Sun warmth on my cheek
    & a car cuts in front to stop
I brake & then they turn
    Without signaling
Richard Maxwell for that long
    Unlistened to
& the high court prepares
    Assault on the New Deal
As we speculate impeachment
    Sorting books to buy or toss
If i had been younger
    An underground railroad of abortion
Might have seemed romantic
    Now i just look at my neighbors
& wonder what “arms” they are “bearing”

The last stretch of Inwood
    Brings dirigible sighting
Not even on my bucket list
    But a world we could have known
How beautiful the blue
    That’s flung from safety lights blinking
We had thought our only concern
    Would be coming up with new style-changes
Toehold only
    In the house i grew up in
Like a taste lost for candy
    In a drawer stow the samples
Just enough got through
    That season of winnowing
Hyperobject
    That never had a name
But what use to say
    Hurricane Michael
+ Hurricane Harvey
    +...Hurricane Katrina
Silverware from one week to the next
    Turned up missing
Brother doesn’t know
    I can hardly bear to speculate
Homo homini lupus
    & these are the plush days
I send Dirae
    At all who displease me
A fingernail too long
    Clings like a burr to all my thoughts
& in such a clime i camped
    The Upper Peninsula
It was glorious
    The air like wine
Mixed forest of evergreen
    & deciduous
This one sounds like music i made myself

& a fearfulness at bay
    From moment to moment
Drive a whole minute without barricades
    Pale dust in the air a pall
Orange cones as far as the eye can see
    No reason they should ever ask us
What we think
    For real
They have all that pretending
    Actors dressed like regular people
Reciting lines in the vernacular
    With just enough emphasis
On the key coded-terms

Pool hall with car out front
    Missing a bumper
Apostrophe error
    On the new coffee dispensers
At Racetrack
    & who should i report it to
Hyperobject
    The disinclination to preserve what we have
Hands that fail to close around
    What’s handed to them
& is it “Kock” or “Kotch”

I should celebrate the diversity of thought
    On what makes a “good look”
In some ways we are really free
    & is there going back from that
I think we make our enemies too powerful
    When if anything they’re less in control
Of what drives them to go against Nature
    & even their own survival
Could we rehabilitate
    Are there enough of us even to try
An artificial sound of crickets
    Like the world really needed that
& admit i am yahoo & yokel
    With small Latin & less Greek
My calculus rusty
    & horns behind me honk
I have played detective
    For a big fat nothing i solved
& my sole successful prophecy
    Was digital should bury the rest
How much juice did that take
    From the font of the Revealer
& whatever i paid for this disc
    It wasn’t enough
Scribed in Italbar runes

Superintelligent dogs agree
    For love of the word “assassin”
Clown drawn in the dark
    Ants in the clouds gather
Yellow lights flashing out
    The many-splendored forms of death
A drawer that resists
    Then yields
Pink & blue striated sunrise
    Song just a second too long
To share
    What have i come to say
Waking up at dawn among trees
    Shivering shaking myself awake
Pierced by the haeccitas
    Of it all
Too vivid to remember

No language to describe
    & most of what we gather we lose
The earth prodigal of waste
    Made us most wasteful of all
Grayblue overcast sky now
    Sound of unseen birds
& a jet
    Bird calling to bird
With a trill that rises at the end
    Take the stairs two at a time
Still
    Storm war shit
Down parse affair
    Wail low in sty
Echo rathe
    A cubic andiron
Edict rista
    Rub a frog
Yoin kin koi
    Gyro a fubar
Strict dinero
    Dianic ubac
Ache a torch Yes
    Tin owl lair
Waif fear spawn
    Do its harm worst

How to get run over by a truck.