Friday, June 22, 2012

Mark Lamoureux


SHAVASANA

The day is glass

Hubris of named hours

A mantra powerful as a plant

What if the dead could vote?

The mighty limbs

The black nerves of the earth

Frame an isthmus of static

Blue & nostalgia the language of sundogs

Pools purple sugar

Water & the insect limbs of sweat

Discomfit a crown of daisies

A ring of poppies a corpse in the sun

Ringing. Silver slash of meteors

& pulverized diamonds

Dip of a beak, a proboscis

Into the moonstone vein

The clear eyes of fireflies

A fire in the dawn heat

A heart

The herm of a second



(LOVE IS LIKE) A HEATWAVE
after Martha Reeves & The Vandellas

Age comes on in the spring

inside                       a black egg

what happens to you

has no shape                       a slick

of magnolia tongues

a red old bruise on the flagstones

silky crush on strangers’ feet

somehow the humans keep coming

like it never gets old

the brass loop of fortune           every

available bird to the old

unreported dead tree           an orgasm

of ink on the grey

lawn            it’s always unawares

the cold of the salt sea the               wick

effect on the lake           the fires

burn on little boats in the dark

kaleidoscope          its bone tube

in the cloud rabbits          golden

for the age           not much

to complain about          because not

too much thought given          too many

laborious green flames



Diviner

The coffee is for the blackness
of the distended night, its two fucking
minds X-ing at a scissor-point.

This preening is a ritual death
repeated on the hour; the bolts
carefully plucked from the quiver
& broken across the knee.

Even Jackson Pollock staring
into his own raked face
the painting could not
destroy it. But even this

is apocryphal, a divining rod pointing not
at water but another rod
pointing up at it from under
the ground.



UTOPIA PKWY
Coltrane’s quotidian
            sun peeling
winter off everything
                      still cold
blue                but not me,
          a closed system
you might say—
                     my skin
is thick ,        but still
           the sun peers
inside & does its violence.

                      If I cannot
be human,
           why must I be
mortal?                     It’s black coffee.
              It’s legerdemain.
Consider this plain
            100,000 years thence—
wouldn’t it be easier
           to just eat things
from the grass & have nothing
           to say?

Because I honestly
           have nothing to say;
you will begin to drift
          toward
                     the margins, all lit up
by the day
           like it could not be
any different; some
           make a big deal out
of shutting up—
                                 I don’t.



SUN SHIP
Sun ship
           for a bier
Stone grey heads nod
           goodbye

Stars melt
          into a joke
                    a line of feathers
into the next universe
           It will be
                      nothing

like writing
                    A cradle
of atoms
                    A voice
A call
                   A gold circle
of the others expanding
           like a song


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