Those Who Were Before

•

We hear them breathing in the air we breathe,
the president of wealth and the secretary of the dead,
even before pandemic AIDS and unethics cut
through whole marble neoclassical hallways drafty
with tactical uranium, scarlet from undulating
rain forest sawyered, debranched, and all lawed up.

It is an honor to salute the great non-military generals,
the colonel of eclipse, and acting director of bullies.
It is a joyous occasion, sir, except the new rules do not add up,
said the latest method of subtraction, sending live bodies
over, but harboring unseen heavily guarded forklift unloadings
carrying the fat coffins covered by the flag. No pictures, mother.

No pictures, you hogs and horses. Surely blood has been shed
in order for the desk lamps to light in the house
after midnight, and this work becomes the work we take on
now, the mall-white maintenance of bodies broken in,
re-packaged and electric scented, the carried labor
gravitizing what it almost feels like to be under sky.

But who knows how it goes when earth is round,
since if we work the ground, then it works us?

They are here with us, but then they're not.
And who sees how it goes when old-growth firs
tower over this room we trust with our lives?