You have memories, sure, but then who doesn't know where you live these days? Camping out in the wilderness until the controversy blew over seemed like a good idea at the time, of course, but that was before the anaesthetics kicked in and you lay there, boiling, and unable to feel the sweat rolling down your leg. They hacked it off with a kind of efficiency that was easy to mistake for care but who's complaining now? Not you! Because you've still got your wits, and the planes don't fly so low anymore, and you never were a big fan of running anyway. Yeah, memories, how about them, now that you get to control when they appear, for example, or when to delay them, send them bawling into your dreams with a swish, the warlords gesturing over 3-D maps of mosques, glistening rivers barely visible between the cracks of competing glaciers sliding across dead moonscapes, ordnance going off, adrenalin bangs in capsule form, and still you bray 'Bring it on, Charlie!!', like you mean it, like you never had forgotten where you hid them, typing in your new password without even looking, or deliberately keying in gibberish answers to standard security prompts. Name of first pet? Eklhferlhl. First girlfriend? Gpwjfrqe;ngqgnntqgwgq Nhwereferhhpfqhppqqhpi. That should keep them busy for a day or two, at least, and in the interim you can retrace your final actual step, backwards into the gun nest, the hot weapon slinging wetly into your palm, as laser-guided melodies peep-peep you to sleep, deep in a dream world you created with a click.
Category: Poems (page 3 of 73)
As of October 2011, I’d posted over three hundred poems on this site, including many sonnets and search poems, as well as numerous poems that didn’t make it into chapbooks such as Abendland and Morgenland. I then ceased posting poems here, choosing instead to distribute them via my poem of the week newsletter. Then I stopped doing that too. Every now and then I post a poem here … but not as often as I’d like.
Imagine a city with no streets
but networks of amputated limbs.
An officious city of criminal investigations
and inquests whose soul is a square of cheap,
grey carpet
and a water dispenser.
The tinkle of pachinko,
the sudden sirens of attack.
Those women with the hand bills,
so stubborn and intent upon their mission,
invading the bodyspace of the factory workers like an influenza.
Sheets of steel carried by a dozen men at a time
towards the railhead.
Rain in bursts of noise upon their heads.
Somewhere there is a map of the city's improvements
but no one I speak with has seen it.
Wheelchair-bound ladies protest at
the new constructions rising up around them
in terrifying spirals.
No-one is allowed to see them.
Behind their riot shields,
the policemen are only boys.
Some of them wear white sneakers,
as if they have been called in from basketball practice.
Sleeping street people
curled up like scraps of paper
on the subway stairs,
trusting that the spirits will protect
their small change,
their street salaries.
Mandarin peels in the gutters.
Sewer smells that hit the face like a nervous pigeon,
the frightful proximity of disease.
A hollow city,
stained with sad skirmishes
and pickled fistfights.
Gouged-out eyes that speak.
Tables hoarded under orange shelters.
Old men dancing in parks for citizens,
while other citizens peer out at the sky
like lost kittens in bamboo.
Squeals.
Drums.
Discarded cloths,
blood-stained.
News of another separatist attack filters through
stale cups of coffee,
cigarette butts neatly stacked like bullets.
A simulated odyssey through virtual historical battles
gains popularity in the parlours.
No one speaks of it;
these things require no advertisements.
Beware the reconstituted cutlets of crumbed meat:
that way annihilation lies.
Pull back the tarpaulin to reveal today's wares—
a rack of twisted and burnt squid,
dried suckers and flattened jerky.
Remove hospital identification barcode.
Shoulder arms.
Somewhere, someone’s filming a movie set in the Middle East. It’s not the Middle East but we’re led to believe we’re there, in a crowded marketplace, waiting for something to happen. Does that scare you? It’s supposed to. Does it frighten you too? The way documentaries used to?
A criminal mastermind sits in a barbershop, being shaved. This scares me, too. An underling brings bad news. The criminal mastermind waves the barber away, pulls off the white smock, the shaving cream still smeared all over his face. His face half-shaved. I’m scared of that, too.
I no longer frequent markets. I stay home at night, the curtains drawn. It’s like I’m dreaming, or underwater but I’m scared, that’s all. I’m scared of men. This world. Their bright lies dressed as ideas. The rain that makes night. The train that doesn’t stop. That scares me, still.
The questions we refuse to ask. The dreams we refuse to remember. The planes I refused to see streaking across the desert sky. The taxes I ignored as shopping lists slammed into hillsides. Does it scare you? The way documentaries do? I’m scared of the things we pretend we don’t do.
Are you scared yet? I am. I’m stuck in a movie set in the Middle East. Something’s about to happen, but I don’t yet know who to. I look around, and all I see is fear. When the blast comes I’m scared I’ll miss it. I always miss it. People call me timid, but perhaps they’re scared of me too.
haiku saucer in the sky moon rises over whitman tablecloth of stars whitman cold as white whitman cold as haiku whitman moon walt whitman as haiku moon haiku face of sky whitman rising over moon flying saucer stars
Lieve, the day we found out that you were here, and on your way, it was a hot summer day in December. Kathleen and I were in Sydney, Australia, staying in a little old surfer’s apartment at Clovelly. It was warm and probably windy that day. It was certainly sunny, and the sky was like porcelain, no clouds. At around midday Kathleen went out for a walk while I did some work on my computer, a part of my deal for being in Australia instead of Stockholm, experiencing a summer which was winter there. When Kathleen came home she disappeared into the bathroom. After a few minutes she called my name. Davey! She may in fact have also made a kind of a-ha noise just before that but I can’t be sure. You’ll have to ask your mother that. She came out of the bathroom and thrust a white plastic pregnancy test towards me. I looked at the tube: it showed a definitely positive reading. And that reading was you. I remember Kathleen lying down on the blue-and white bedspread and sleeping for two—for you.
Lieve, the day you were born was also warm, a long summer day in August. We were back in Stockholm, living in a ground-floor apartment in Svedmyra, out in the suburbs. It had been hot all summer long. I had ridden my bike to work every day, feeling a sudden surge of energy at the idea of your impending arrival, thinking also that there might be no time for riding bikes or sitting in parks or going for walks, like your mother and I did that summer before you arrived. As it turned out, our walks didn’t stop, and almost as if by magic you were with us. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The day you were born was a very hot day indeed. It was also a Sunday. We had been expecting you to arrive a week later, on the first anniversary of our wedding. But that Sunday morning, at around 10am, Kathleen called out my name once again, this time from the kitchen. I came in from the lounge room and saw a small pool of water at your feet. Eight hours later you were there for real.