GRAVITY FEED Part Seven

7.
Phantasy integers
keep the machine happy,
you?
           Numbers count nothing,
they are the dried stains
that colors leave
on the mind, the
“angstroms of affliction”
he called them
before he went away—
hespera men
ên
evening and the conspirators
split blades of grass
and whistled through them
till the whole meadow
squealed and shivered—
go ahead, hurt my feelings,
punch the air.

GRAVITY FEED Part Six

6.
Hobbyhorse for rent
that’s me, ride me
to your quested shore
and I’ll be boat again
to take you there,
your secret place
doesn’t even exist
till we arrive—
an old word means
to come to the banks of a river,
stagger ashore—
now no boat, no home, no me
he said.


GRAVITY FEED Part Five

5.
Tamas has it too,
the names he knows
now of many things
so listen, sister,
the song says.
                             Love
the new poets
answering the ocean,
knowing the song’s
not in the throat
                   (that’s
opera, bud)
but in the mind.



GRAVITY FEED Part Four

4.
Didn’t mean to let the world back in,
it has a habit,
                             a
history jones
she called it in Detroit
                                                a
habit of needing       
                             and
wanting,
          the
names of the dead who did this
to us,
             our ancestors the fish, the founders,
Olson had it,
                             knew
          the
so-called facts
                                      of
times and places
are song enough
and what they did
is what song says,
a roaring metabolism of remember.



GRAVITY FEED Part Three

3.
You saw them then,
                                                the
material
encouragers,
                             whiffletree
between
weary horses, cart
full of cauliflowers,
plodding through the harrowed
fields, glebe they say,
of memory,
and maidenheads for sale in frightened countries,
Eighth Avenue in evening shadow,
eggplant hurried supper
seminarians back to the book,
book,
             that sly theology the eyes believe—
and dear god the things we do to each other.