Ames Progressive

Bolshevik tart
You smudged your revolution across the face of that boy.
You sent him stumbling out of the bar
Like a child scattering his sweat out of the ruined village.
Years after, he’d feel phantom pain in the center of his chest
when it rained or snowed
or broke out a few splinters of sunshine.
He’d feel your words like shrapnel.
You […]

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A group is an army or a dissembling cause
&
A leader is a demagogue or the first defector
&
A cause is a leader or an army
&
Its employment is armed or vocalized
&
The wasps are an army
&
Their leader is a lung alive with air
&
They don’t dissemble they assemble
&
Cohesion is the hand—always bite
the hand that feeds you if you’re hungry.

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1.
The mirror must forgive the face,
that the
razor may forgive the nose.
The wall must forgive the nail,
that the
mirror may forgive the face.
2.
The street must forgive the shoe
that the
shoe may forgive the foot.
The field must forgive the street
lest the
feet stampede the field
3.
The tooth must forgive the sweet
that the
mouth may forgive the tongue.
The mouth must forgive […]

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There once was a word on a page
- a dead actor on a white stage -
that, touched by an eye
was enabled to fly
into meaning from out of its cage.

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It’s time I had some time alone
Welcome to the endgame
Welcome to the 23rd hour
Somewhere in the frozen dark
The bell tower waits for the moment
That time stands still
She brought me a candle
I’ll never forget the play of light
In her eyes and the room full of smoke and sound
Words and pictures hands and faces
Changing places
It’s time I […]

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There once was a hand on an arm
on the shoulder of a man on a farm
that, milking an udder
for milk for butter,
made bread taste better when warm.
There was a thin woman who felt
that the face behind which she dwelt
was not her real face
and had it replaced
by the face of Somebody Else.
There once was a physical […]

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I.
He is an old brown mound of 700 pounds
Draped in a hospital blanket that falls upon
His slanting cliffs, his worn peaks, his damp hillsides
And folds down into the drainage ditch
Between two rolling foothills: his legs
This ditch has plastic pipes that drain the sewers beneath
A tube rises from the snow blanket
Like a ski-lift straight to the […]

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&
my name is not yet a stone’s relief,
not yet a mossy page—
my bed still covered in grass.
Work still undone, unnamed.
The dirt under my nails is from
filling in my plot—pushing the stone.
& my grave is not yet confirmed;
hand, head & pump, still alive.
Better than alive and still.

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Just look at my fingertips
they have been burning bridges all day;
I’m out of matches—
but the sun is the biggest match
of all & with its reach
I’ll burn a hundred more.
Make peace with the one
who has burned down all bridges—
that person is matchless.

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“First melted off the hope of youth
Then Fancy’s rainbow fast withdrew
And then experience told me truth
In mortal bosoms never grew
‘Twas grief enough to think mankind
All hollow servile insincere-
But worse to trust to my own mind
And find the same corruption there”
-eb
(Sprang the land from up forth the garden came).
dark mask filtering the sky – even still […]

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