Truck

Marc Vincenz

marc.l.vincenz@gmail.com

Illuminated

and the gods themselves were nameless, natureless, futureless …

                        —Enuma Elish 

A transfiguration—

new forms before

agricultural revolution

in the everywhen

of a lost paradise:

a tree, a mountain,

a pole, a ladder

embodying the sacred

& profane—before

they are brought down

& that epiphany

of a hidden source

when people wanted

naught from the sky

then, all that wrongdoing

but also the vitality

of a quintessential connection,

the gods of the stratosphere. Did you

not yearn to rise above

where myth & ritual

are embalmed?

Catharsis, Dionysus, bringer

of sweetness toothed, bringer

of light dimmed.

May your sweetness

be the footsteps

of our desire.

How do you blast

your trumpet

with that bumblebee

bouncing off walls?

What a beneficent god!

A liminal figure

bringing wisdom 

from the very breast of nature.

& the wine & nectar flow

like flames staring

into the eyes

of a civilization ignited

by the substance of Empire.

& the smoke:

a five-headed century

follows her red dust

for two thousand years.

Break in the Battle

Man and unwavering

word in a never-

ending revolution.

To be lost in a forest

with a broken

spear in hand

and that fading

fanatical cackling

echoing across treetops.

The air heavy

with broken bone;

even here, inside,

encircling the fingertips

of pine, in-a-word,

to carry on,

and finally, in the empty

fucking reaches,

to absolutely know it.

Forty Feet High from Here

Tough choice.

Hullaballoo.

Scribble.

Rarely intelligent.

You know those simple stares

that cover up the mind.

Democracy is an entire force.

We have risky takes

on how fragile the concepts,

shedding the wrong answers.

Fearing who’s

listening could cause

a psychic collapse.

Shoot straight.

Scribble.

Bugaboo.

Repose.

A Revolutionary Commander Addresses His Troops

And so to war again to crush

those rabble-rousers. As the General

has often said, there’s always another.

Discontentment must be flushed out—

extinguished like the red foxes

chattering beneath the bridge.

The good General, bless him, might,

in all his mercy, forget—when jocular

and jovial among brass bands and streamers—

that it serves no great purpose

to feed the living when they’ve already

been pronounced stone dead.

Sometimes Someone Votes No, but I’ve Never Seen It

we vote green

if we agree and

red if we don’t

it’s all

tallied up

by that man

over there

(with the square glasses)

churned evenly

in a clear plastic pot

so all can see

there can’t be

manipulation

of any kind

what could be more democratic than that?