Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
Farther away — much farther,
high as a predator drone above the caution tape,
distant as a satellite from the chalk outline on the street,
safe from the suck of the swamp,
its cottonmouths & mosquitoes,
free from the burden of earth
& the deadly irredeemable stones,
beyond the sting of conscience
& the discomfort of moral ambiguity,
rapture me in the always-now of amnesia,
in the never-enough of consumption, rupture me,
oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god.
I am not done with this one book, and you want me to try a second? The writing is backwards, and corresponds to nothing I know.
Between one page and the next, they launch the fall line of suicide vests with developmentally disabled children as models.
Between one verse and the next, they send a satellite to snap pictures of lakes on a moon of Jupiter.
The words fall softly, like the tolling of bells without clappers. The golden frogs vanish from the green mountain.
The type font bulges at the bottom: tears tattooed on a gang member’s face in remembrance of each his victims.
The letter kills, the Word makes whole, and the whole makes a mishmash of identities.
The Amish bishop says of the communion wine: If one berry remains whole, it has no share in the whole.
Oh War, my War, save us from this quagmire of holiness.
in response to an Instagram clip by Janet Lees (janetlees2.0)
we meet ourselves between
two thrown stones
how can ripples not reach
the edge of each other
a mirror dancing with itself
grows boneless flesh
translucent skin meant
for an angel of onions
how can ramification not lead
to a kind of godhead
dwelling in absurdity
like the invasive species we are
a tree-of-heaven nursing
its litter of lanternflies
we become monumental
in our blind trust
rust blooming
in the rain
oh holy ghost pipe
let creation somehow survive us
one-flowered
cancer root
let our names break down
into a tilth
This new film, the result of a collaboration with two of my favorite poetry filmmakers, Janet Lees and Marc Neys, was the highlight of my week.
Here’s how Janet introduced it on Facebook:
A collaboration between Dave Bonta, Marc Neys and me. Dave wrote the poem in response to a film clip I shared on Instagram, a mirrored image of a pebble I’d thrown in the river, and Marc composed several pieces of music to the clip. This is one of the pieces, all brilliant, that we think works really well with Dave’s incredible poem.
It’s fun to collaborate with fellow loners, each of us kind of doing our own thing in response to the others.
If you missed the plain-text version of Psalm 2.0, I posted it back on October 3rd.
yours is the thorn that suckles us
the marsupial pouch in which we play king of the hill
yours is the rare orchid appointed
to a moth no one has ever seen
yours the corals whose cities shone
like nothing from a planning committee
and yours the epidemics the cancers the blights
a creativity as limitless as time and space
oh Nature soften the hearts
of all your little pharoahs
so we don’t have to overthrow them
and let those who insist you must be male
give birth through their penises
open the knives
of my heart to rust
blooming like a sunset
the earth’s stillborn twin
glows with purloined light
dimming the stars
and the midnight creek
has one or two things to say
it shimmers as it should
a freight train
labors up the valley
wailing at every crossroads
I feel a howl
uncurling like a leaf
from its shrink-wrapped fist
almost full will do
for an almost fool
to raise his coyote muzzle
