phosphorus fetish

Some HPB history.

Even before the robot eyes kept track
of our ev'ry move (to make us tempted better),
the forces of this earth were echoing clatter
small & large, each station of the trek.
No one can say they never changed the course
of thousand thousand mild trajectories
nor find, ahead, as many secret doors.
But how may a poet, in this thought, clasp peace?
I walk into the cold & dark garage
& speak to the rafters there, the concrete stained
from years; these things that now, haphazard-donned,
surround, are not the meanings of the age;
i drift on shadow-sails, through seas of bilge.

oberambergris

(cookie portrait of "lorenzo" by stacy chandler)

Number 8 wire.

This useless trace i leave upon the earth
invisible to some, unseen the rest,
is all that keeps me sane, as from the first.
Of all the ways men fritter away their breath
i choose the airest, leanest, scatterest sleight.
They say it's sometimes steel an isopleth
& one evasive to the usual scythe;
i seek no such reward, nor hazard that bet.
What i can imagine might befall my words
belongs with dreams of how we ought to live.
Since listeners are more than we deserve
the sooner these, as their smug sire, be rid:
not for themselves, but for the gain, runs love.