poems
chapbooks
prose
articles
reviews
books
guidelines
faq
about
bios
cover

links
home
  Dan Raphael  
   
 
     
     

The tallest thing flat-topped enough to land on


a tall thin glass with ice cubes intensifies the light;
no mist of evaporation, an almost sweat of contact, what will fall in there
from the sky or ceiling, a glass as ignored as clean, a work
     of time-based art—
those arent ice cubes those are memories or visions, a chance encounter:
he was killing an afternoon while she was going home empty
alone with the bay we multisect to grid the water so none escape
or get lost—
seagulls with remote cameras, dolphins sniffing each boat for its address,
im not authorized to swim here unless decontaminated from my inland     status,
i cant drive but i can run 30 miles an hour, for errands and appointments,
to try and find the house i lost last weekend, even though my key
     fits the lock
some other me's already there, not the same size but similar style,
     having taken that turn
i missed a decade ago, , seeing a blizzard as an opportunity

this west virginia mountain must have its top blown off to realize its full     potential,
this river has gone flabby with clarity and needs the challenge
     of contaminations,.
i cant get to Everest's peak and whats the point of leaping
     from anywhere else
close enough to evoke the gods wrath:
i act so strange one of my parents had nothing to do with me,
spawned by an angel or raven flying inside a sudden womb, a mirror bright     yolk,
must be opened away from oxygen—rust is censorship, fire is totalitarian

holding seconds like water, when the clocks stop what do you feel,
     power loss
through how wide an area, conspiratorial signal to scramble the satellite all cell phones are timed to,.without windows I don't know when to wake, I have too many choices and nowhere to go,
72 beats a minute, don't look too close at the sun or youll see its pulsing     like a tornado
stuffed with what its picked up but driven by such an intense spark it cant     stop erupting,
nverting its point to bring the upper atmosphere and all its refugees
back to the surface that no longer remembers their crimes, thousands
     of functioning identities
with no people behind them, bank accounts generating their own life styles,
packages that neither arrive or return, remote control delivery trucks guided by rogue satellites programmed by the imagination of those who     never turn off the tv

i dream of bicycles so i can generate in my sleep.
show me your closet and i'll try to respect you. so few closets with shrines     in them:
a wall of shoes, a wall of vacuum compressed plastic bags where the labels     tried to run.
when the basement gets overheated and the attic succumbs to mold.
mice who can gnaw concrete; squirrels who can solder.
a stripe by any other name. a stain from internal hemorrhaging:
hold something back long enough and it wont know what to do when     released.

after six weeks of solid clouds the first sun demands we shed our coats
     and expose our legs
even if its 45 degrees. its not the temperature but the angle of light,
i wont contort my neck for an early start.
if i shower long enough i'll lose a couple ounces, fit more easily between homes—
doors this narrow are always custom made,

how my car must snake to avoid scraping, puncturing, various wounds
     with various solutions,
a medicinal rain, sunshine only works if you take off more than youre     wearing.
only my inability to play back sounds and images keeps me from being
     a cellular device.
i hear what youre sending. im a baleen whale immersed in data krill,
penguin clouds, water smelling older, unravelling.

like eating from someone else's plate far from home. forgetting
     which hand is which.
here the knife is more important than the gun, the cook has many ways
     to snare.
hands among the surfaces, spoon to mouth to memory & speculation.
when the heat's turned off the aromas are peaking and the sun dives below     the cloud cover
but not yet the horizon. the meal means different things to each of us,
hours of stories we each could tell, always something someone
     no longer eats,
something someone hasn't had for decades. then we reinfiltrate the land in     small groups,
connected only through the meal which isnt sure which map to give who. No     stars to guide by,
stairs in every direction we look no cars, few people, for a moment an eye     in the sky,
a gunshot 3 blocks away.
release your inner barbarian,      repudiate the poisoning of birth,
draw what you see when your hands are taped over your eyes,
—its better luck to be brokenthan to melt,
when the future falls through my spine i bend my head over completely
so you see me a rectangle, my eclipsed mouth engulfing my heart

     
     
     
 
   
     
 
 
       
  Copyright © 2012 Pemmican Press and the author/artist represented.