MYTH
Rumors of the dead prone, waiting cut in the miry, fetid ink dark—
Across conspiracies of craters, depressions,
dead zones spreading inland—the prophecy of the understory
burning lapping at the purple root from which issues our tongues.
Source, spring of the endless minor threats that daily shrink
the boundaries of safe, beautiful, miracled — the pit and crook of our arms we extend each other
I’m driven mad scoured the westward wind persistent rains of the {atomized} financial district, the courthouses, the departments, the municipalities
The features of the removed world suddenly return to us
scattered precariously in the spiral staircase, the fire escape, the rope ladder
That leads to the interior of her imagination
This is exactly how revival in ghosts increase so rapidly in a populace with an aversion/dedication to death. & why I still see our mothers in our periphery
Visited by a devastation so complete it becomes an element of the landscape, like the pond of meltwater new high water mark, new debris littered on our banks
We each seek shelter in ourselves, in our deep territories the tall stands of shadow pine trees Not only featured in recurring dreams—the ubiquitous
murky booted murderers approaches
The torch illuminating each particular feeling — little black dingy punctuating
the undifferentiated surface of your tourmaline interior sea that extends
heat and small light extended precariously over deep waters
Considering the Capital
the endless springtime campaign
reduces main street to
to fine white residue / ash that pills in our laps
collects in the heels of our waterproof tactical boots.
Increasing minimum violence to maintain a fantasy of longtime sweethearts reunited,
strolling aimlessly through the white sodic haze of a streetlight grid
commenting on the length of spring & the abundant, unbelievable fruit
another one of the various successes of the fireteam
made available to us in increasing resolution on various platforms—
charges are set on the graffitied pylons, columns, & corridors
essential to the suspension of a particular bridge
their search for you with spotlights
that unevenly pierce the ubiquitous smoke
the light appears to you
idle, white milk, blind eye
youth disarmed one way or another by the awful drama
& the disagreement about the extent to which the youth is disarmed.
extinct minor roles think of death
The surrender of [the brasserie] at noontime] & other lesser miracles
A vigilant & reclusive populace, otherwise preoccupied
with the frantic work of survival continues
their spectacular performance of unsustainable love
the tireless recreation of remarkable prayers
recorded in dead, [unknowable] languages.
prior to our absolute annihilation [ transformed by necessary death ]
sufficiently pulverized by munitions, the city becomes the smoke & frantic activity
of the removal of cobblestones from the capital building
at a certain point of failure, the city as particulate matter you breathe
staining cuffs and collars – frustrating businesspeople on their commute days away.
Murder
Deaths left marks on each bed that correspond with the marks on our heart,
held
Our language like a doe in a field, in moments such as the one where we discover
clawful is not a word.
indicating rebelling dead subducted—one body folded over & over ::
increasing weakness
in compounded creases
ruined municipality surrounded by infrastructure, such as:
billboards advertising flourishing commercial activity;
forever redirecting commerce into itseself
businesses
you never quite locate, except in forms skeletal.
she lives carefully within impressions made by the footfalls of minor gods—
She’s involved in businesses the attorney fails to fully locate in a brief that he writes
While a leak forms in the attic.
Even her rudimentary understanding of spellcraft keeps her protected from the violence that characterizes American life.
faithful public servant :: a catalogue of consistencies
of fatal interludes
& commonplace attitudes
urban threnody mechanical protest{ mechanical protest of public transpo ::
terrible tragicomedic dialogues emanating from neighboring suites ::
inexplicably verdigris of the clogged sink flooding an upstairs bathroom }
you reissue from clefts
overlooked by invading forces
you consider new
algal congestion in sodic pink waterways—
dying fish starve for oxygen, bellies coming up silvery.
after several seasons of struggle :: a listless, lifeless summer
a patron of shadows,
violated whenever another figure consumed with minor pursuits
transitions swiftly into commercial space
subsequent reduction to ash & obliteration of your fashionable colorways
we noticed—afterward—disturbances in the overgrowth ::
arrival of new animals
recorder as growing activity in your remaining verdure—
Refugees
Among the munging lowborns—
a cartographer, a prophet,
Magic depends upon the disadvantage
it retreats into their container hearts.
rumored sole remnant of that nation
famously struck first by nuclear payloads
lean, learned woman owns an
airy, silent magic
still
hunted by colluding militiamen
invisible & ubiquitous amid boreal dieback
corporeal exhibit of expenses incurred
from rebuffing a mankind pursuing its singular intention—
so, dead in some ways:
her loosely bound
crimson lungi
(lifelike during downpours
that sting her purpled body—
shivering
hardwood boughs, beneath)
she moves killed militiamen
beyond a stand of shimmering green sigils.
a lesson on:
these infinite varieties of trivial suffering
& if disturbance of verdure suggests
a predator other than a fox
again, these pitiful men
regroup in anterooms—
outraged, interrupting praying survivors—
laying tripwires
vision leaves her iris shining useless &
she moves clumsily, practically blind;
soon:
her left leg catches in a metal tooth spring trap installed by some enemy of grace
but
she nonetheless again assigns herself new names,
safe in the clearing—
changes shape but only briefly.
lessons on: how to overcome mostly everything, once— how to survive while drowning
in such relentless violence
Body Suit
I blackout firing rockets into a pine stand. I come to in a puddle of foaming organic matter. I am wearing a prototype that has been compromised. Dead return suddenly birdsong falling like rain across grasslands. A fire has started to burn wildly across the trunks of the evergreens. I wonder how the dead can return with the extinction of birds and grass. I throw up when I hear the audible pop of heated water.
My helmet relays the message: I deserve to die. My watch confirms: I deserve to die. The corporeal form must be surveilled in order to maintain its stability. The suit begins a long sprint during which I pass out due to the severed neural link. I’m seizing in the harness and the world seems artificial, cheap and I learn that impossible to consider seriously with my erection.
I wake up to flashes of the suit cooking my buddies alive. The suit turns north to enter an exposed field littered with weaponry more valuable than the government that bought them. I am the last soldier fighting in an unmanned war. A script written by children is delivering me to my annihilation. Some ancestor buried in our red, throbbing interior hates being in the open. I will leave the wife a message.
BODY SUIT II
Remnants of the body retrieved from its sunken middle:
A memory purples the walls of beating pomegranate core of my mind cannonball dense
Another evening [ ] the capital city: Perfusion of dimness drooping figures pursuing the quiet sublimity of a domestic lives bound to falter in these weird hours
Voice—frantic bleating throat
Silence gradually pools in the smooth depression
At the base of the skull left after the shelling
Every day, I rededicate myself to maintaining a raft of images
Rediscovered in the flotsam, the sea foam preserved by the mechanism of the eddy, of love
Framed pictures, evidence of the obliterated capital
long labors of the taxed bodies
baffled by the missions our parents began
Every day, we open our hatches, leave our shells with purpose, vanish into the wilderness
Fumbling for tinder
Fumbling to find each other in the intractable darkness here beneath the canopy
Fumble to find a reason to continue this endeavor
This, and other abstracted description of the extinct
illuminates the small single-level office of our souls
you find yourself
conspiring in dimness
unknowingly trampling rare [verdure] we stake unverified claims
clarification
grace & horror of each new return from expeditions
survival in the extremities
of the diminished world
reflected by this adder coiled & boreal dieback
i think i am looking at you when i ask do you see how this looks
CHARACTER | SCENE |
the reconstruction of the sunken, relocated capital.
Subsidized light, split amongst the municipalities,
Subdued light prevails on the boulevard of pleached as and oak and the [citizenry]. I am surprised at how successfully life is reproduced here.
Actors cast as the dead, citizens obliterated by suborbital strikes I myself oversaw, populate old neighborhoods with a vigor undiminished by my pointed inquiries.
Sufficiently augmented, the city appears immaculate, full of movement—the courthouse, the apse, the rafters—...sufficiently augmented with projections,
Throughout dinner a dinner of atomized roe, Elise remains invisible to me behind the cornstalks.
The HOTFIX
resolves the misbehavior
of songbirds, the glitchy blind stork
stumbling confused in the murk.
The reports of what breaks in this form
include: summertime (loping, manifold, opal)
suspended on the folds of our tongues like peach pits.
Platforming birdlife throughout the featureless landscape
Installing another conspiracy of midnight, of waxwings, of the violent reduction
of familiar landmarks to ash.
The glorious worldwide engine
of the republic glimmers in the distance—
Information within our lossless system at worst redistributed,
not destroyed.
BODY SUIT | III
Swears firsthand witness local myths of dim milk moonshine
flooding the valley
Molasses moorland
wildfire occupies the valley
suspended in the half lit purple season—
Exhausted bodies :: forage for berries & edible insect life
in the extremities of a decapitated nation.
:: witness widespread obliteration
of familiar forms
featureless drowned submerged
beneath the rising violet currents.
mountains
Overlook the summertime
plunder of our diminished world.
Overlook smoke issuing
from marshland
Turning increasingly crimson.
Find me after the financial sectors lose
their detail to the mechanics of meltwater—
I am not the bumper crops
or their senseless ignition
I am not the bullet
or the sucking, frothing pleural cavity
issuing from it.
I am not the reflexive coordinated movement of flowers to sunlight
or the light descending.
I am a colorless figure emerging frozen
from the languid meltwater
hoping that danger will pass,
wiggling pink digits tingling signals of gradual thaw.