Call to Duty

Do we have to come
to your wheelchair?
Am I to support your blind?
Carry a torch
for your addiction?
Which IED are you?


Image

We forget and keep
forgetting
to take the film in -
to wait for it, examine it,
glory or mourn for it -
just the mere miracle
that it is still there
defeats our small efforts,
the transportation
and storage of it
require our time and some
of this most precious space,
an amount of planning
but less than the investment
we make in expecting of it,
remembering it and finding it
in the first place, our own.

Lady Stanhope's Resurrection

As I wait for Stanhope
to arrive from the shores
of her immense madness
and congregate destinies,
that soft position of observation
known as a safe distance

the anti athiest hard core of me

I remember my old teeth
with a dream-like reverence
and hoping, a sin-cere hoping.
My theory is what you think
it is if you know me,
if you've watched me move
through a bookstore
tearing out the pages
of certain defamatory books,
sampling the Brach's.

Yes, I have a sincere hoping
for all my future teeth
then the children who
take drugs in order to be kind,
the kids with dimples
and notebooks.

The mind is a monopoly,
a theocracy and a bulb,
it turns on and off
and it flickers at night.
So the body twitches
until it finally goes out
forever, arms and legs follow
suit. No emporer left
to muster for - kowtow to.