for Lorca
The kings of Spain eat the future
until every soldier becomes a canvas
And the land waking from its slumber
goes to war again with its original face
While the rest of the world comes to
peace or comes apart piece by piece—
The moon like a wild animal
dismembers the tenure of the snake, rose, apple,
Machine, shoe and forest with its
bandaged gravel until it is larger than reason
Or the night where it crushes an
American corpse interred deep in the soil
He loves most to exaggerate into
poetry or grass. Everything stares to the north,
The bags are packed and there is
nothing to carry as the stars take on greater meaning
And the small towns abandoned in
mid-breath take their sentences and shadows
Away from the fences and stadium
lights, crops overgrown—
Someone left the water running.
There is a lamb walking down Main St. bleating
Against the rain as gunpowder. Did
you hear the ice break from the weight
Of a cricket? Language has bones and
a life of its own—you alone in a big hotel room,
Flames jumping out of a hole in the
floor, you stare down into it until it becomes paper,
Illicit forgery, the extra sweat on
the dice, the unfamiliar shadow cast when feeding
The entire city with their little
piranha and clean wheels. Nothing falls out of a window.
The heart, a flood in the middle of
the street, the sky it holds in its mouth can’t sing
Or anguish over what it must abandon
as it retreats from what breeds in its absence.
World without birds, cemeteries or
proof, where a little boy can still
Be heard laughing across a warm
field when he cuts off his own hair,
Daughters sleeping between the locks
fall out one season at a time
Losing all meaning, fall as bullets,
rest in the water, mute, blunt.
No bread made from your blood as an
empty cabin struggles against a flood,
Wires and black oil escaping from
their prisons, your throne a treasure map
Recorded in a drum—
O, there will always be dictators
and people dancing, séances before a round spoon,
Idiots and blind faith, courage,
guitars, and the desert growing from the ocean to salt
What is left of your mouth—
No witness, no longitude, no
airplane, no way All the light of the
world fits in an eye, no mirror,
No place to contain forever, New
York, Havana, Hell or the snow, simple as the red drape
Pouring out of your body like love.
JJ is a
poet, editor, and teacher/student of Chinese internal martial arts and Tui Na
acupressure. He lives in Woodstock, NY.
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