“From such crooked timber as
humanity is made of, no straight thing was ever
constructed.”
Kant
he liked the shelves of white
rock broken and turned on end by the Earth
their noses jutting into the
crotch of the bright sun lapping blue skies
the broken fingers of brush
hanging at the edges of rock slides
where they grabbed the
descending earth trying to save it
the fingerless earth unable to
grab back or pull up
uninspired by the yanking brush
unable to cease their slip
the demands of their gravity
knobs of their bones strewn in
sorrowful rents
beside the railroad tracks lie the
desiccated skins of black and white cattle
drawn long by runoff into shapeless
sacks
except for the elongated tubes
that were once their legs and bleached portions of skulls
peering out of their mouths
under improbable trees blown wayward and ridiculous
rusted corrugated tin sheets collapsed on a
broken wood
skeleton timber beams and broken ribs
several boxed rooms broke flat indistinguishable
an immense cow flop digested then evacuated thoughtlessly
“There is not a negro alive who
does not have . . . rage in his soul . . . this
fever has recurred in me, and does, and
will until the day I die . . . Our failure to love without due care . . .”
James Baldwin
Notes of a Native Son
careless loving thoughtless loving or love ignorant of the ramifications that
supple pairings may grow brittle
a quiet fragility
while supple can sway and bend
and withstand abuse and force brittle shatters and splinters
becomes sterile
then what would become of all that Beauty
a formation of empty pilings
driven into a low tidal
creek for some reason
stands forgotten unfulfilled
patient
dry rot permeates its heels
pits
its heads like a worm-eaten lobotomy forgetting
remembering
forgetting to remember
or remembering to forget
once possessors now vagrants
some still erect crumbling
proudly
while others turn slump
the collapse of an ancient tree
is heaped with spent fence posts and planks kinked rusted barbwire and uprooted
shrubs gathered with nooses of hemp rope slashed
possibly
once
thought to be burned in a raging bonfire
a
fireballs tail nailed to the earth
now embraced by sexual wood
squids in orgy
tenacles winding groping
intertwining
finding sexspots beaks agape
gasping in boiling pleasure
and among them odd calcified
skeletons tight-lipped bitter
unpleasured ugly sullen untouched
the train turns inland turning
his back to the sea
the vivacious lands evaporate
he is surrounded by brown bald hills fields of flat pancaked faces and depressions
harrowing in their gauntness
and deprivation
some
of the crackerjack houses
wrapped in clotheslines were decorated with colored and geometric
patterned fabrics
other structures were washed
blue slush boxes like melting ice cubes dumped by wayward drunks who think fresh
ice will bring plentiful fresh liquor to sweeten their nightmares and cease their delirium
tremens shaking
pitiful alcohol junkies
who cant recognize spilling
booze is a waste and there is no one who will refresh their glasses
slake or slay their hard-headed demons or spur their ugly cross-eyed
lovers
who were never worth the dip of their dicks
at the snap of their entrails
or the cleft of their asses
nor were they
they all were just
Something literally to do
a forgotten fuck is a disease
a warm receptacle breeding their
discontent
he could see what they cant
1pmishness, Twosday,
11 11. 08
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